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Railing pillar medallion: tree shrine marking Konāgamana Buddha's awakening
India, Bharhut Great Stupa, Madhya Pradesh
Not on view
A pair of female devotees kneel before a throne that marks the spot where the Buddha Konagamana—one of six past Buddhas (the historical Buddha of the present age is the seventh)—attained awakening. The bodhi, or wisdom, tree rising above them is rendered as an Indian fig, with distinctive fruit pods and broad oval leaves. At the Bharhut stupa, five such tree shrines with dedicatory inscriptions to five of the past Buddhas are depicted on the enclosure railing. These narrative scenes were strategically located on the railing’s interior surface to ensure their visibility to devotees walking around the stupa. The past Buddha revered here was also honored by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the mid-third century BCE.
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