Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/62

32 fragment of the Wheel of the Law supported by a group of admirably carved elephants. One of the two attendants standing by the side bearing the royal insignia, a yak-tail fly-flap, is intact.

The symbol which crowns the two upright supports of the gateway has been identified by M. Foucher as the nandi-pada, or zodiacal sign of Taurus the Bull, which is said to have presided over the birth of the Buddha on the day of the full moon in the month of Vaiçākha (April—May). The simplest form of the sign is a circle surmounted by a crescent, representing both the sun and the moon, and also two of the Aryan warrior's favourite weapons, the discus and the bow. The association of the sign of Taurus with the birth of the Blessed One points back to remote Babylonian times, when the Bull was the first sign of the zodiac and marked the beginning of the solar year. The old-world legend that humanity was born under the sign of Taurus perhaps fixed the appropriate time for the celebration of the Buddha's birthday. This festival of the Buddhist Church was probably, like the symbol itself, borrowed from Vedic ritual. The day of the full moon was one of those in which shrāddha worship was paid to deceased ancestors, and the appearance of the symbol on the gate of the stūpa seems to be a reminiscence of the ancient Chandra worship. Here, as in later Buddhist monuments, a central point has been added to the crescent to indicate perhaps the tri-ratna, or three jewels, the Buddha, the Law, and the Sangha; for similar symbols very frequently have a different signification according to the age to which they belong. The symbols of