Page 24 - Met Museum Ghandara Incense Burner

bells, reminding us of the two significant Buddhist
verses relating bells to the Buddhist faith. I have
referred above to early Buddhist passages which are
intended to accompany and elucidate the earliest
images of the Buddha and which speak of the bells as
representing two stanzas of the Buddha's teaching.124
About the time this burner was made, Buddha images
were beginning to be produced, and it was important
to give them a high degree of authority by providing
textual
appropriate justification.
Excavations at the site of Kara in Old Termez in
Tepe
southern Uzbekistan have revealed a Buddhist complex
containing fireplaces or altars which can be inter-
as
preted having both a utilitarian and a cultic function.
Figure 42. Four figures around a lamp, detail of a base of a Despite the fact that there are no textual sources for
Buddha image. Swat, 2nd or 3rd century a.d. Swat Museum, Buddhist ritual of the time, Tigran Mkrtychev
has inter-
Saidu Sharif, 2465 (photo: Museo Nazionale d'Arte them as stone votive altars on which incense was
Orientale, Rome) preted
kindled in front of a sculptural pictorial image of the
or
Buddha.125 He tied this concept in with the images we
have shown above. Consistent with this idea is a pas-
sage from an early Buddhist text meant to accompany
again, except in isolated cases.119 We have looked at a Buddha image: "He, who is in charge of the lamp
numerous burners represented throughout the art of and who is going to light the lamp, should first of all
Gandhara and most of them have no lids, even though light the lamp in the abode of the Lord's Body, when
their flames often rise up in the conical shape of a lid.
But incense burners of this type are illustrated on
Buddhist narrative reliefs, frequently below the image
of a Buddha. The lids of the burners are open, and
they are supported securely by their hinges. In other
words, burners of this type, though fashioned after
incense burners from the West, were used as lamps or
torches. The most important example in Buddhist art
of an incense burner possibly being used as a lamp is on
the base of a relief of a Buddha dated to the second or
third century (Figure 41 ) . 1 2O
a.d. and now in Peshawar
Except that the stem is less tapered, distancing it
somewhat from the classical prototypes, it is the clos-
est parallel to the bronze burner. The lid is open and
hanging securely on its hinge, while flames burst forth
from the burner.121 The dish to catch the embers no
longer has this function and is turned downward, and
several bells hang from it. In a relief from Swat (Fig-
ure 42) that is probably close in time to the Levy-
White bronze burner, the disk has become a double
lotus (with no bells), and a long, tapering flame
comes out of the upper bowl. In this case, the illus-
trated burner is about the same size as the bronze
burner. These burners come in several variations,
some short with a round
some short with four legs,122
base,123 some tall and slender. In most cases the
flames of the lamp take on a conelike shape reminis-
cent of the lid of the Levy-White Figure 43. Siddhartha Fasting. Gandhara, Sikri, Kushan, 2nd
burner. A burner is
Gray schist, H.
or
a.d.
cm. Lahore Museum,
84
3rd century
illustrated on the base of the famous Fasting Buddha in 2099 (photo by John C. Huntington, courtesy of the Hunting-
Lahore (Figure 43). The burner has two hanging ton Archive)
92