Page 20 - Met Museum Ghandara Incense Burner

served a ritual function in Gandhara),81 torus-wreath The Incense Burner as a Buddhist Object
motifs, especially those subdivided into sections,82
and birds of bronze and copper used as stoppers.83 What, in fact, makes the Gandharan incense burner
is
Other examples are swastikas84 and swastikas com- Buddhist? The first response admittedly less than
As stated above, the bronze was included in
A
bined with pipals.85 jewel casket with a chain fas- scholarly.
tened to the lid was excavated at Taxila, as was a vessel a catalogue of Buddhist bronzes in the Nitta Group
with human heads enclosed in swags that was clearly collection.93 before the catalogue entry was writ-
Long
based on Hellenistic prototypes.86 Perhaps the most ten, incense burners had already been included in
important of all is a copper lid of a vessel from Taxila Japanese Buddhist ritual. The various symbols that
(Figure 33) which bears similar cutouts of a crescent Martha Carter, in her article on the incense burner,
moon and heart-shaped out as having royal and secular implications
motif.87 Marshall was uncer- pointed
tain of its function, but it clearly resembles the lid of are by no means antithetical to Buddhist art.94 Previ-
incense burner. The
the Levy-White long shaft on top ously, we have discussed the elements of the burner as
would have helped to open the vessel when it con- if they were Western. We must now reread them in
tained hot embers. Marshall illustrated the lid next to Indian terms, as we would describe any other Indian
of its
a stupa casket on a square base covered with gold religious object regardless apparent style.
leaf.88 The visual association between votive stupas, A magnificent incense burner in the shape of an
stupa caskets, and the Levy-White egg and topped by two bells rests upon a lotus that
incense burner is
more than coincidental. issues forth from the deep. The sacred object is
The association of the Gandharan incense burner guarded by the guardians of the four directions.
with Sirkap, city These features have quite explicit significance in
the Shaka-Parthian at Taxila (theoreti-
cally pre-Buddhist) , as well as with many other objects Indian art. One of the most common and potent of
belonging to the Kushan and pre-Kushan period, may symbols is the lotus. The lotus and its stalk (above
a
seem to present problem, especially as we are about referred to as the shaft and disk) are in fact the
to demonstrate that the burner is a Buddhist object. defining element of the burner. A lotus, by nature, is
The Kushans succeeded the Parthians after the pure, despite the fact that it arises from muddy waters.
shortly
middle of the first century a.d. The most well-known Thus it became the symbol of the birth of Buddha. As
Kushan king, Kanishka, who began his rule in about Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha was a member of a
a.d. 100, was a patron of Buddhism.89 We know from kshatriya caste, which is lower than the caste of the
numerous inscribed sculptures that many images of Brahmans. Buddhists believe that all men, from what-
the Buddha were made in monumental form through- ever caste or state of birth, can arise from the muddy
out Kanishka's territories, including Gandhara and waters of life, just like the lotus, to attain Enlighten-
Mathura (near modern Delhi). It was traditionally ment, or Nirvana, just as the Buddha did. While the
believed that there was no Buddhist art in Gandhara lotus is a symbol of birth (i.e., life), in Buddhist narra-
before Kanishka's time. Therefore that appeared tive reliefs incense burners of this type are often asso-
objects
to be of the first
could not
stylistically century certainly ciated with the death of the Buddha. In India it was
to
be Buddhist and objects that were clearly Buddhist not contradictory juxtapose the Buddha's birth and
could not be of the first century. Nevertheless, new death. In order to attain Nirvana one must free one-
Buddhist manuscripts epigraphi- self from birth and death, which are part of one con-
from Gandhara and
cal and archaeological evidence, especially Swat,9° tinuous process called the cycle of transmigration.
in
indicate that there was indeed patronage of Buddhism This concept is illustrated on a lintel from the South
in Shaka-Parthian times.91 While the reign of Kan- Gate of Sanchi Stupa 1 ,95 One side of the panel shows
ishka was important for vastly increasing Buddhist Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess fortune, issuing forth
of
artistic production throughout northern India, we from the center of the lotus, a symbol of the birth of
now believe Gandharan Buddhism began in the first the Buddha, while on the other side of the lintel is a
a
of
a
century. Thus we are in the process denning style stupa, funerary mound referring to his death. After
for the first century a.d., and in that process an passing through the narrative reliefs on the gate, the
object as famous as the Bimaran the great stupa, the ultimate
reliquary, traditionally worshiper approaches
dated to the third century a.d., is now considered pre- symbol of the Buddha's final release, or Parinirvana.
Kushan.92 This is extremely important because the But the fact that the incense burner itself is issuing
is
reliquary unquestionably Buddhist. The incense forth from the lotus (regardless of its functional
burner is less conspicuously Buddhist, but these cir- aspects) may indicate that it is in some way symbolic of
cumstances do not exclude it from being Buddhist or the Buddha's presence or of his life. While Buddhist
in
from the first century. art was only taking shape Gandhara, it had already
88