GANDHARA, 3RD CENTURY

The scene belongs to a group of reliefs generally attributed to the miracle of Sravasti where Buddha performed eight miraculous feats using divine power before King Kosala in Sravasti, who had challenged his superiority. During the second and decisively overwhelming miracle, the two Naga kings, Nanda and Upananda, created a lotus on whose petals Buddha seated himself and by supernatural power created multiple images of himself that issued all around him. Here Buddha is flanked by standing Bodhisattvas each supported on lotus bases rising from water indicated by incised wave designs on the base; compare with another example sold at Christie's New York, 23 September 2004, lot 29. Related scenes have more recently been interpreted by John Huntington as scenes from the Pure Land, where Buddha teaches the law to bodhisattvas during their final stage of learning, see O. Bopearachchi et al. (ed.), De l'Indus a l'Oxus, Archéologie de l'Asie Centrale, 2003, cat. no. 207, p. 230f.

This relief is closely related - both in the figurative composition and treatment of the lotus base with individual petals reminiscent of an artichoke - and likely from the same workshop as the inscribed Teaching Buddha relief formerly in the Claude Demarteau Collection, see P. Pal, Light of Asia, 1984, p. 191, and I. Kurita, Gandharan Art I: The Buddha's Life Story, 2003, p. 143, fig. P3-VIII. By inscription the latter was dedicated between the years 83 and 150. In that example, the bodhisattva on the right is in identical attitude to the present example, and can be identified as Avalokiteshvara by an effigy of Amitabha in the headdress, while the bodhisattva on the left is likely Maitreya. A similar central grouping is also depicted in two reliefs at the Peshawar Museum, see H. Ingholt, Gandharan Art in Pakistan, 1957, cat. nos. 253 and 254, the latter including chapel-like edifices above the two flanking Bodhisattvas.