| Abstract: |
Recently eight red sandstone reliefs were discovered at the base of Selagiri hill on the bank of the Kaladan River, Rakhine State (Arakan). These reliefs provide evidence that the Buddhism popular in the late fifth century C.E., in that area was Mahayana, greatly influenced at least artistically by reliefs and murals at the great Mahayana site of ca. the late fifth century, Ajanta. Buddhism, however, was venerated together with Shaivism and Vaishavism as is indicated by Shaivite and Vaishnavite images in relief from the same site. Reliefs of the same period at the not distant Mahamuni Pagoda, Dhanyawadi, appear also to reflect Mahayana artistic influence from Ajanta as well as from what may be Central Asia, and introduce the concept of Bodhisattva to the region and what may have been an Ashtabodhisattva mandala with the Mahamuni Image at its center.
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