Offering of the Four Bowls

This medallion-shaped niche represents the offering of the Four Bowls. The episode takes place just after the Enlightenment. According to the Lalitavistara sūtra, when Trapuṣa and Bhallika, two merchant brothers, wished to offer the Buddha his first meal, the mere thought that he had no bowl caused the appearance of the Caturmaharajika, the four great Kings of the cardinal points bringing four golden bowls. The Buddha, not needing four bowls and refusing any precious material, then thoughtfully transformed them into stone and assembled them into one. In art, the bowl or pātra is often depicted with the neck decorated with the four grooves representing the four bowls set within each other. Here, the scene is reduced to its main actors and its composition re-imagined from traditional Gandharian representations. On the surviving fragment, only two of the four kings are preserved. They were presenting their gift bowls to the Buddha, who must have been at the centre of the scene, with the other two deities holding up a mirror.

It is not certain that Tapa Kalān is the place of discovery.