APPENDIX The following notes are designed to help readers examine more closely the episodes from the Buddha’s life as related and depicted in this book. They include comments on both the Buddhist context and the paintings. Artistic features are described first, followed in some cases by an explanation of terms. The English text of the main picture sequence is based on the Burmese text of the Burney manuscripts, supplemented by reference to the full version of the Mala lingara wuthtu. Each double opening of the original Burmese manuscripts reproduced in this book is, for the purpose of identification here, divided into three or four “sides” representing the folds of the original concertina-format manuscript (each fold can be seen faintly as a vertical line on the printed page). In the notes that follow, these sides are referred to, from left to right, as a, b, c, and (if applicable) d. The folio numbers of the manuscripts are given first, followed by the page numbers on which the images appear.
b. Exercising his yogic powers, the hermit Sumedha hovers in the air and witnesses the preparations for the feast. b–c, center. Men and women clearing and preparing the road for Dipankara. The workmen are painted with slightly coarse faces and hair. They work bare-chested, with their lower garment looped up between their legs; a foreman, seated (c, foreground), directs operations. The city gateway has a plain three-tiered roof. c–d, upper. Dipankara, followed by yellow-robed monks, each carrying an alms bowl, enters through a two-tiered gateway and, hand uplifted, proclaims that Sumedha (prostrated at his feet) will one day also become a Buddha. Kneeling at Sumedha’s left and holding lotus flowers is the girl who will, in Sumedha’s final existence, become his wife, Yasodhara. The historical Buddha, Gotama, is believed by Buddhists to have been preceded by many other Buddhas over incalculable eons. The world, in Buddhist thought, exists over an infinite number of immense time spans or world cycles (in Pali kappa, Sanskrit kalpa), each of which in turn has other time divisions and during which successive Buddhas have manifested. In the present era (bhaddakappa) four Buddhas, of whom Gotama is the last, have appeared, and there remains one yet to come: Metteyya, the future Buddha (in Sanskrit Maitreya). Of the previous Buddhas, the names of twenty-seven besides Gotama are known, and Dipankara was the first of the twenty-four who immediately preceded Gotama. It was in Dipankara’s lifetime that the hermit Sumedha received the first prophetic intimation that he himself would become a Buddha (i.e., Gotama).
Or. 14297 F O L I O S 2 – 3 ( P. 1 7 )
THE BODHISATTA AS SUMEDHA a. The king, seated in his palace under a tiered roof spire (in Burmese pyathat), orders a feast to be prepared in honor of Dipankara Buddha. On either side of the king are two white umbrellas on stands. These form part of the Burmese royal regalia—only the Buddha and royalty are entitled to a white umbrella. The king wears his ceremonial robes (those of the god Sakka), appropriate for an encounter with a Buddha. The ministers, kneeling before him, wear the long draped velvet robes and tall hats of high-ranking Burmese officials.
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