ガンダーラの菩薩思惟像

Bodhisattva seated in a posture of thinking, which is distinguished from the usual form of meditation, gives a very intimate feeling. Among old Chinese, Korean and Japanese Buddhist sculptures, we have many examples of this type of Bodhisattva, including masterpieces that are most familiar to us. For these reasons, much interest has been shown in this type of image among Japanese learned people, and they have often discussed the origin and the real name of Bodhisattva in this posture. Undoubtedly the type was originated in Gandhara, where a few rare examples were discovered, for instance, from Takht-i-Bahi and Loriyan-Tangai. The image which is first introduced here in Pl. V is also one of them. It loses the provenance, and we are only told that it was brought back home some sixty years ago by an Englishman who had been on service in India. The image is a high relief carved out of Gandharan schist measuring 67.8 cm in height, and is almost perfect except the halo. Like the famous wooden statues of this type at the Kōryūji, Kyoto, and the Chūgūji, Nara, of our country, it sits on a pedestal representing a cane-made seat resting the right leg on the left knee. Its right arm bends at the elbow, which is settled on the knee, and the forefinger, which is now broken off, stretches toward the cheek while the heek while the head nods responding to it, ―― a typical posture of typical posture of thinking. It is of an ordinary form of the Gandharan Bodhisattva, with large flat halo (now half broken), moustache, princely costume and ornaments. But the craftsmanship of the image cannot be highly ranked, as it shows the chiselling being a little coarse, the modelling lacking plastic volume and power, the drapery being rather formal and frozen. These stylistic characteristics indicate that it is in the phase of increasing deterioration of the Gandhara School, and may be dated in the latter half or probably the end of the third century. This image, holding a lotus flower in the left hand, is apparently a Padmapāṇi (Lotus-bearer). According to Buddhist iconography, Padmapāņi is no other than Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. But there remains room for question if both of them implied the same deity at the early time when the Bodhisattva image appeared in the Kushan Period, for we know that mere worshippers holding lotus flowers were often represented in Gandhara sculpture, while several, though very few, Bodhisattvas identifiable with Avalokiteśvara by being crowned with the Dhyāni-Buddha are also discovered in Gandhara and at Mathura. It is beyond doubt that in both of these areas they produced images of Mahāyānistic Bodhisattva, but among them only Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara can be identified by their particular attributes : the waterjar (kamaṇḍalu) of the former and Dyāni-Buddha on the crown of the latter. Therefore the author is of the opinion that the image illustrated in Pl. V is undoubtedly a Padmapāni but that it does not always denote Avalokiteśvara in the case of Gandhara sculpture. Lastly the author discusses the possible origin of this thinking posture. Showing a Gandharan example of seated Bodhisattvas attending on the enthroned Buddha in the scene of the so-called “Miracle at Śrāvastī” (Pl. VI), where they are represented in various loose and relaxed sitting forms, he presumes that one of these forms was chosen to apply first, theoretically at least, to attendant Bodhisattvas of a Buddha, and then the independent image in a thinking pose came to appear in Gandhara. As is clear in the present figure of Pl. V, the pose with nodding head, leaning body, one leg pendant and one arm bowing is not a posture fitting to a main image. The fact that the back of its pedestal is shown unsymmetrically at both upper ends also seems to suggest its original character peculiar to an attendant figure.