This scene, formerly represented in Gandhara and Central Asia, became an icon of Buddhist art in Theravada circles, a branch of Hinayana or Small Vehicle Buddhism.
Shakyamuni is seated on a stepped throne with multicoloured facets, the Vajrasana “diamond throne”, beneath a tree forming a dais. He is performing the canonical gesture of “calling the Earth to witness” whereby he invokes the goddess Earth, duplicated here at the foot of the throne in a female figure praying and a bearer of offerings so as to attest, before Mara, to the multitude of Shakyamuni’s blessings in his former lives.
Mara is represented twice upon a chariot drawn by a white elephant, bending his triple bow or drawing his sword, and twice standing, and held by male and female figures who are perhaps his offspring. The demons of Mara’s army, as well as his soldiers falling off their chariot, are represented vanquished, their heads down, in the left lower quarter.
Several deities whose appearance is at times fierce or hybrid, with multiple arms and riding animal or fantastic mounts, stand out among the army of demons, belonging to esoterism or religions exogenous to Buddhism but assimilated as protectors: above the Blessed One, on a background of flames, a terrifying deity, blue with three heads and eight arms, is perhaps the Wisdom King Atavaka. Below, in a white niche, a four-armed deity holding two crossed swords and two human figures by their hair, might be Mahakala.
Among the haloed deities looming over Shakyamuni, four warriors in scaled armour can be identified as Lokapalas, those guardian-kings of Buddhism in the four cardinal directions. Other Hindu deities can be seen: Indra with lightning; Shiva Maheshvara with a dark complexion, three heads, and four arms, riding the bull Nandin and bending his bow; Kumara, the Indian-type archer with four arms and six heads, astride a peacock; Vishnu, dark, with three heads upon a gilded eagle (Garuda) and blowing into a shell. A bearded figure, wearing boots and a white cloth on his head, wielding a sword, may be Mani or Rostam, the Persian hero identified with the deity of silk.
Other divinities also may belong to assimilated indigenous religions, such as the deity in flight, bearded and crowned, holding a platter of fire evoking a deity of Zoroastrianism, or the figure donning a plain loin-cloth, bearded and bald, holding a horn of plenty and a bunch of grapes, calling to mind Silenus, Dionysos’ tutor.
On the side bands, some images of Buddha may represent several outstanding scenes of his life or else some miracles he performed: in lower left Bodhisattva’s meditation under the tree of Awakening, the twin miracles of water and fire at Shravasti, the miraculous apparition in the sky, the seizing of the moon and the sun, the walking on the surface of water, the crossing of mountains, up to Parinirvana, in upper right.
The lower strip, instead of the usual donors, displays the seven treasures of a Chakravartin sovereign of Indian cosmology, bearing in their midst inscriptions in Uighur not yet elucidated.
This exceptionally rich painting may thus feature Shakyamuni vanquisher of Mara, but Master of the Universe as well, adorned with gold and holding the seven treasures. In claiming the universalism of Buddhism, with just a few figures it evokes the cosmopolitanism of the world known at the time in the Dunhuang oasis on the borders of Central Asia.
