Forest Scene

Borobudur

In this unidentified Jataka tale - possibly Dasaratha, a Buddhist version of the Ramayana - along the first corridor, a hunter accompanied by attendants fits an arrow to his bow amidst a forest scene of rocks, vegetation and deer. The charm and naive realism of this and other jataka carvings seems quite appropriate to such scenes of the natural world.

The blocks of stone, seen here, are fitted together and joined without using any kind of mortar or cement; this method of construction is characteristic of the monument as a whole, and elsewhere in SE Asia, for example at Angkor Wat.