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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
The elephant at Dhauli, site of Aśoka Maurya's inscriptions, is the earliest Indian monumental sculpture. Aśoka reigned between 270–235 BC and the Dhauli elephant is dated c. 257 BC. Only the elephant's forefront is sculpted; about half of the animal's bulk remains within the rock (Figure 1). One art historian claims that Emperor Aśoka is in the vanguard presenting himself to the people of Kaliṅga. Usually, however, the Dhauli elephant is considered symbolic of the Buddha. The well-known story that Māyā dreamt that Siddhārtha entered her womb as a white elephant motivates this view; to wit śeto (i.e. śveta), ʻthe white one’, is inscribed at the end of the 6th Rock Edict.
1 Niharranjan Ray, in Age of the Nandas and Mauryas, (ed.) K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, 2nd edition (Delhi, 1967), p. 371.
2 Hinüber, Oskar von, ‘The Buddha as a Historical Person’, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 42 (2019), pp. 231–64Google Scholar; in particular, pp. 239–40.
3 Giovanni Verardi, ‘The Buddha-Elephant’, in Silk Road Art and Archaeology 6 (Papers in Honour of Francine Tissot), (eds.) E. Errington and O. Bopearachchi (Kamakura, 1999/2000), p. 69, fns. 5 and 8.
4 Reference kindly supplied by Oskar von Hinüber: mā kuñjaro nāgaṃ āsado dukkhaṃ hi kuñjata nāgamāsado, Vin II 195, 28*: “You must not, elephant, attack the elephant (i.e. the Buddha) for attacking the elephant means suffering” (H. Hendriksen).
5 Trautmann, Thomas R., Elephants and Kings. An Environmental History (Chicago, 2015), pp. 128, 196–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.