No. 28. — 1884.] first fifty jAtakas. 131 



images of Buddha must have come into vogue many centuries after 

 the Stupa. That tope represents scores of scenes illustrating the 

 history of Buddha's last, as well as 6f previous, life, but none in 

 which an image of the saint is being worshipped. For purposes 

 of adoration the Bodhi-tree, the Chaitya, and the Wheel of Law, 

 were the only principal objects selected, and, occasionally, foot- 

 prints ; but we look in vain for statues of the saint. This would 

 have never been the case had images of the saint been worshipped 

 in the time of Asoka. That Emperor would have never allowed 

 so important an object to be neglected in his sculptures, had it 

 then attained the rank of one worthy of being worshipped. On 

 the Buddha Gaya rails there is also the same entire absence of the 

 image of the saint as an object of adoration. A century later, in 

 the Sanchi bas-reliefs, we notice the same absence of statues of 

 Buddha ; but in Mathura, two centuries afterwards, they are largely 

 met with, and this I look upon as all but conclusive evidence 

 against the use of statues as objects of worship for the first four 

 or five centuries after the Nirvana of the great reformer. He 

 fought most strenuously against ritualistic ceremony in general, 

 and idol-worship in particular, and his teaching was respected for 

 a long time before it was set aside. The tree of knowledge was 

 the first to claim respect. It had been the means of bestowing the 

 perfection of wisdom on the saint, and all who aspired to that 

 wisdom naturally looked upon it with respectful solicitude. After 

 the death of the teacher, the grave or chaitya was associated with 

 it, the one as the receptacle of him who had acquired perfect 

 knowledge, and the other as the source of that knowledge. The 

 worship or adoration paid to these was confined, probably, to 

 prostration before, and ambulation round, them, and the offering of 

 a few flowers for their decoration. These were the ways in which 

 respect had been shown to the teacher himself, and in his absence 

 they were rendered to his emblems. The pictorial representations 

 of scenes from the life of the saint were intended solely as ready 

 means of impressing on the minds of the masses the history of his 

 life, and the moral maxims which they inculcated, and not to 

 require any adoration. In fact, they were purely ornamental ; 

 they were never adored, and from the positions they occupied in 

 the buildings, they could not be used as objects of worship. Images 

 intended for worship would imply temples and sanctuaries, but 

 down to the time of Asoka temples were never thought of, and 

 idols for worship could not have existed. The word Vihdra, so 

 often used in later works for a temple, originally meant only a 

 convent, a place where the homeless hermits of the sect could find 

 a shelter during disease and decrepitude, and also from the 

 28—85 c 



