The Eight Great Events in the Life of Buddha

Jagdishpur relief, photographed in 1872. A very rare survival of a large scale depiction of the Eight Great Events.[1] Over 3 metres high, perhaps late 10th-century.

The Eight Great Events (aṣṭamahāpratihārya)[2] are a set of episodes in the life of Gautama Buddha that by the time of the Pala Empire of North India around the 9th century had become established as the standard group of narrative scenes to encapsulate the Buddha's life and teachings. As such they were frequently represented in Buddhist art, either individually or as a group, and recounted and interpreted in Buddhist discourses.

The Eight Great Events are: the Birth of the Buddha, the Enlightenment, the First Sermon, the Monkey's offering of honey, the Taming of Nalagiri the elephant, the Descent from Tavatimsa Heaven, the Miracle at Sravasti and his death or Parinirvana.[3] Each event had taken place at a specific location, which had become a place of pilgrimage,[4] and there was a matching set of "Eight Great Places", "Attha-mahathanani" in Pali, where the events took place. Apart from his birth in modern Nepal (just, some 10 km from the border), all the events took place in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh in north-east India.[5]

Small stone group from Bihar, 11th–12th century, 8.2 x 6.1 cm (3 1/4 x 2 3/8 in.), apparently taken back to Nepal by a pilgrim.

Before and after this period there were other groupings, both smaller and larger, with 4, 5, 20, and other much larger groups found. A grouping of four events, the Birth, Enlightenment, First Sermon and Death was the most prominent, consisting of very important life-events.[6] Larger groups, such as the 43 on the 20th-century Ivory carved tusk depicting Buddha life stories in New Delhi, tend to have more from the Buddha's early life. A 15th-century Tibetan painted thanka has 32 scenes, of which 15 precede the Enlightenment.[7]

A common iconography for steles in relief had a larger central Buddha figure, normally showing the Enlightenment, surrounded by smaller scenes showing the others. The Parinirvana, with a reclining Buddha, is normally at the top, over the larger figure, with the rest three high on each side. In small versions of such a scheme the space available means that events are distinguished largely by the mudra or hand gesture of the Buddha.[8] Sets of paintings, which only survive from rather later, show all eight at similar sizes.

  1. ^ British Library page
  2. ^ Kinnard, 105
  3. ^ Craven, 174; Brown (2003); British Museum; Prematilleke, 162–168
  4. ^ Behrendt, Kurt, Metropolitan Museum blog: "In the Footsteps of Buddhist Pilgrims: Sites in North India", 25 February 2014; Michell, 186
  5. ^ Map of the Eight Great Places; Behrend, 5 also has a map.
  6. ^ Pal (1984), 39, 52
  7. ^ Pal (1984), 66
  8. ^ Huntington, 396–397