Fragment of as Sculptural narrative relief panel from a stupa drum illustrating the first bath of the Buddha, grey schist, 1st century AD, Swat Valley

This badly damaged fragment is part of a long slightly curved frieze from a stupa drum. The surviving scene contains a representation of the Buddha's First Bath. The child stands frontally in the centre of the panel while two male figures pour water from two water jars over him in a scene of lustration. Only the outline of the Buddha child is preserved. A male figure (probably Brahma) on the boy's left, with a cockaded turban shown against a nimbus, is dressed in an antariya with an uttariya draped over his left shoulder and looped across his body down to his right knee. He wears a breast chain over his chest. Standing with his left hand on his hip and his left knee flexed, he looks towards the boy. The figure on the other side ( probably Indra) stands in apparent profile with his head looking over his shoulder to a worshipper behind him. He too wears a cockaded turban, but without any nimbus behind his head. He wears his antariya drawn up between his legs and tucked in at the side. His uttariya is slung round his body and over his back and he has a shoulder chain. Remnants of another worshipper on the right hand side can still be discerned. The scene is set within a plain rectangular border with the remains of rounded pillars and capitals on either side,and a small fragment of the adjacent scene on the right hand side. A badly abraded foliated garland runs across the top of the panel.
There is a fixing pinhole between the heads of the two left hand figures. Traces of a beige-coloured mortar can be seen on the back of the relief.

Presented by Barger and Wright

Acquired from Evert Barger and Philip Wright as part of the collection of finds excavated during their expedition to the Swat valley in 1938. This is No. 69 in Barger's lists. For a discussion of the iconography of the Buddha's first bath see W. Zwalf, No 152, p. 152
The site of Gumbat (Pashto for ‘stupa’) was first visited by Sir Aurel Stein in 1926 (Stein. M.A. An Archaeological Tour in Upper Swat and Adjacent Hill Tracts. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, 42. Calcutta). It was visited in 1938 by E. Barger and P. Wright during their expedition to Swat and Afghanistan. Despite considerable looting it has been and continues to be an important site and it has been excavated further by the Italian Archaeological Mission (IsIAO) from 1956, in 2005 and from 2011and 2012 in collaboration with the Pakistan government under the Pakistan-Italian Debt Swap Agreement (PIDSA).
Evert Barger, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Bristol, and Philip Wright, from the Indian Section of the V&A Museum, undertook a survey and excavation of the site during their expedition to Swat. Philip Wright with T.D. Weatherhead, working as surveyor and photographer, were largely responsible for the excavation work in Swat where they stayed for two months in the summer of 1938 while Barger travelled on to Afghanistan. Forty fragments of architectural and sculptural objects from the site were brought back to England, of which 16 were acquired by the V&A Museum. The residue of the collection, which had been left in store at the museum was acquired in 1961. Photographs of the expedition by Weatherhead are in the British Library in the collection of William Vernon Emanuel, who was also a member of the expedition.

IM.82-1939