When the winter was over, in the month of Vaic,akha, the Bodhisattva descended from the beautiful Tu$ita abode, entered the womb of his mother, on the right side, in the shape of a white elephant with six tusks, his head cocheniUe colored, teeth streaked with gold, complete with all limbs and parts of limbs and faultless in every organ. On entering there he leaned against the right side and in no way to the left. Queen Maya sleeping gently on her couch, dreamed this dream: "Like snow and silver, with six tusks, beautiful legs, a fine trunk and a red head, a magnificent elephant has entered my womb, graceful of motion and with limbs strong as diamonds."

And in the same night that the Bodhisattva entered his mothers womb, in that same night a lotus rose up from beneath the mass of water and splitting the great earth over sixty eight hundred thousand yojana's ascended to the heaven of Brahma.

And no man saw this lotus but the Leader, the best of men, and the Great Brahma, ruler of ten times hundred thousands. Every germ of the three thousand great thousands of worlds, all their power, their essence or quintessence, was contained like a drop of honey in that great lotus. When the great Brahma had put that drop into a fair bowl of lapislazuli he offered it to the Bodhisattva who took it and drank it up in deference to the great Brahma (54: 18; 55: 2; 64: 11).

These two passages are a good distance apart in the text; their being placed together on one relief is explained by their chronological sequence; as the text specially mentions that the lotus roseup in the night of the conception, while the intervening events (relief 15—21) took place after that night, it was logical to put the lotus-episode where it chronologically belongs.

The queen is still in the upper chamber as before in relief No. 9, the details of which are now for the first time clearly discernible: on the ground floor we see the closed door, the guard sitting before the palace and above, the chamber of Maya lying on her couch and surrounded by her waiting women, one of whom holds a fan. At the head of the bed is a lamp, and a water jug with a lotus. The queen is lying on her right side, which differs from the account given in the text, in so far as the Bodhisattva is to enter the womb on that side, and the position of the royal lady, makes this no easy task, as Foucher remarks l) On the right of the chamber is a balcony on which two more attendants are standing, still more to the right, under the trees and outside the building, some soldiers of the guard are sitting and standing, the same as was to be seen on relief no. 9. Like the guard on No. 8 here is also a bearded man who in this case is armed with sword and shield and therefore belongs to the soldiers. From the upper corner, left, the Bodhisattva is descending towards his future mother, in the shape of an elephant, surrounded by flowers and shaded by an umbrella, with feet on lotus cushions. Beneath sit three persons in devotion before a tree stem rising high in front of them, and terminating in a lotus, which must be the giant lotus of the text. On top of it is a bowl, certainly the lapislazuli bowl in which Brahma puts the drop of honey from the lotus flower to offer the Bodhisattva. That three persons are paying homage to the lotus, does not agree with the statement that only Brahma and the Bodhisattva saw the wonder-plant; neither is there the least indication that one of these figures is Brahma. The first one holds an ordinary lotus, the last one is making a sembah and it is not improbable that they do not speciaUy belong to the great lotus but are intended for divine witnesses of the conception. In that case Brahma does not appear at ad and the sculptor has considered the wonderplant with the bowl on top, enough to represent the second passage.

The head of the elephant is rather worn-away; if the drawing by Wilsen is reliable, then the animal was carved with only two instead of the requisite six tusks; this might be expected, as nowhere in Indian art are the six tusks to be found. No more the wrong position of Maya is due to carelessness of the Barabudur artist, for it is found just as well in other Indian representations, the same with the proportion of the elephant towards the mother that is much too large: in both cases, the Gandhara art as well as that ofAmaravatisometimes give a more natural picture. The peculiarity that the Bodhisattva who appears on the previous relief in divine shape, is here shown as an elephant and has therefore changed his appearance on the way, is, according to Foucher's convincing explanation (A.G.B. I pag. 291—296) the result of the fact of what was first a dream being later accepted as reality; in this way the texts became confused, which naturally affected the monuments as well. The later Chinese art solved the difficulty by trying to unite both representations, putting the Bodhisattva in divine shape upon a white elephant.