Assassination Attempt on the Buddha A Mysterious Relief Panel in the SRO Collection of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Peshawar

Abstract

The relief panel (Fig.1) that shows a scene from the life of Buddha is part of the SRO collection, which is now in the possession of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums (DOAM), Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Since its first entry to the collection, the sculpture remains unidentified and to our knowledge unpublished. It is a unique or at least a rare example of its kind not only because
it depicts one of the most important events of the Buddha’s life, but it also represents certain enigmatic figures that needs to be distinguished and identified. In this preliminary study, we are trying to describe the pictorial representation of the episode vis-à-vis the Buddhist texts and also to decipher the characters of the event.