67. The Bodhisattva takes leave of Chandaka arid Kanthaka, and cuts off his hair

After these were dismissed, he thought to himself: "These ornements and Kanthaka I will put into the hands of Chandaka and send them back". Then the 130dhisattva turned towards Chandaka and spoke: "Go, Chandaka, return with these ornements and with Kanthaka".

Then again the Bodhisattva thought this thought: "How can the wearing of long hair be combined with the life of a wandering monk?" And after cutting off his hair with his sword, he threw it into the air. It was gathered up by the three and thirty gods to do it honor and until this day the feast of the locks of hair is kept by the three and thirty gods. (225: 9, 15)

On both sides of the relief the style of the landscape is strewn by the conventional rocky scene with trees and plants. The Bodhisattva stands in the middle wearing only a loincloth and sacred thread, he is cutting off his hair with a sword. On the right is Chandaka, who holds in his right hand the headdress just received from the Bodhisattva and in his left the sheath of the sword. Kanthaka stands just behind him; here, the animal has no saddle on, as it had on the preceding relief, and neither bit or bridle: another instance of the sculptor's indifference to detail. On the other side of the 130dhisattva are some figures of gods, two kneeling, the first of whom revently holds up a dish of flowers; the large elephant ears of the figure behind him in sembah, make it clear that this must be Qakra's servant Airavata, and the one with the flowers will be ,Cakra himself; Airavata's headdress has been knocked off. Behind these two stand three other gods, two of whom make a sembah. Up above, on a cloud, on each side of the Bodhisattva, is a heavenly being; the left one holds a ribbon, probably the hair ribbon, the one on the right has a dish with the coiledup mass of hair; this seems rather premature for the owner thereof is still busy cutting it off. In the note on p. 172, I mentioned a couple of Gandhara-reliefs on which the parting from Chandaka is strewn; there too he receives his master's tiara with the other ornaments. This is worth noticing because, in the old-Indian art, the gods are seen carrying away the tiara with the hair coiled up inside it; representations of the adoration of it frequently appear 1) and the dismissal of Chandaka so as depicted at Sanchi 1) agrees with it; here we first see the kneeling servant and the horse, opposite the large footprints that take the place of the Master, and Chandaka has nothing in his hand, while below, where he is going home, he takes garments and ornements with him, but not the tiara. The Gandhara art is inconsistent, for sometimes it depicts the tiara being honored by the gods 2) and at other times puts the tiara into Chandaka's hands. Barabudur's idea is better, Chandaka gets the tiara and the gods only carry off the hair. Here the sculptor has broken away from the tradition of the adoration of the tiara. The art of Campa also sends away the horse and tiara together3). The cutting off of only the hair, has also been found on a relief at Sarnath4) as well as in Turkestan 5). Haircutting and leave-taking are treated in the same way as two separate scenes at Ajanta 6) and Tun-Huang 7). At Pagan no less than eight reliefs are devoted to the events immediately following the Great Departure up to and including the parting from Chandaka8). Even at the offering of the monks dress he is still to be found.