93. The Bodhisattva sealed under the Bodhi-tree

Now the I3Odhisattva betook himself with the bundle of grass to the place where the 13odhi-tree stood and walked round it seventimes keeping it on the right, spread out himself an excellent layer of grass with the points inwards and the roots outwards, and set himself thereon with legs crossed, turned to the East, the body upright, holding his memory active and made a firm resolve thus: "May my body wither on this seat, my skin, bones and flesh decay; until I have attained the Wisdom so hard to achieve in many aeons, my body shall not be moved from this chair !"

And while the Bodhisattva was seated at Bodhimanda, at that time he spread a radiance called the Bodhisattva-stimulation. From out the East, that part of the universe called Vimala, from the Buddha-field of the Tathagata Vimalaprabhasa, came a Bodhisativa, a Great Being called Lalitavyuha, housed by that light, surrounded and followed by Bodhisattva's without number, to Bodhimanda where the Bodhisattva was, etc. (289: 1 1, 16; 290: 5, 9).

In a most diffuse description we are told how similar companies of I3odhisattva's gather together from the nine other points of the compass and how they render homage in various superhuman ways. We will not follow the text any further, any more than the sculptor has done, who has lightened his task by just representing Bodhisattva's coming to do honor to the Bodhisattva seated under the Bodhi-tree. We shall merely notice that the Bodhisattva is already sitting and therefore the well-known scene of the spreading of the grass l) in the Gandhara art is not here given. In the middle of the relief the Bodhisattva now sits in dhyana-mudra on a plain seat, the back ornamented with makara-heads, above which a triangular space is left out for background to the head and halo. On both sides of that space leaves and branches of the tree appear. On the right of the throne is a vessel with high lid on a pedestal, left, a dish of flowers with smoke rising from it. Further, right and left, we see the Bodhisattva's; one standing in front on the right makes a sembah, the left one has probably had an incense-stand and fan (now knocked offs and behind, the rest of them is seated, some holding flowers. In the background as well on both sides a staff with pennon and a tree. The woman who puzzled Pleyte (p. 131) is only a mistake in Wilsen's drawing of one of the two standing Bodhisattva's.