Narrative Panel – The Mara’s Assault

In the historic Gandhara the lower external walls of the stupas were adorned with a profusion of high reliefs narrative panels that depicted the main episodes and the extraordinary events of the life of the present and past Buddhas.
Together with images of the Master placed in niches, these high reliefs composed a sacred circuit that the worshippers circumambulated, gaining the spiritual benefit granted by having paid a tribute to the holy place where the relics of the Master were preserved and having looked at and memorized the Siddharta tales and Buddha’s teachings.
Clearly of Graeco-Roman derivation, the narrative panels are peculiar of the Hellenized Gandharan production, conceived not just as architectural elements but as true works of art.
This panel represents one of the main episode of the life of Siddhartha on the way to Enlightment.
While seated in meditation under the bodhi tree, the Bodhisattva was tempted by a demon, Mara, who offered him all the mundane pleasures and the power and the immortality of a god.
Angry about the Master’s refusal of his gifts, Mara went back to him in an aggressive mood with his army of frightful and monstrous creatures, whose deformities are often represented in the scene.
A simple gesture of the Bodhisattva was enough to defeat Mara and his followers who ran away or fell in various ways.
The episode is represented in this panel in two subsequent moments.
On the right, Mara appears with his right hand on the sword hilt, surrounded by his soldiers while his son, who is trying to discourage him from acting against the Master, looks out from the shoulder of the demon.
On the left, the scene presents Mara defeated.
The demon looks scared, the sheath is hanging empty from his waist and the blade of the sword is bent.
Siddhartha has triumphed on the illusoriness of the phenomenic world.