Further towards the South we meet more than one representation of Buddha’s parents, the _Shâkya_ king of _Kapilavastu_, _Shudhódana_, and his first wife _Mâyâ_, honoured for the coming event, the next birth of the divine son. The _twelfth_ (23 W. L., 1 after the _fourth_ angle) is a symbolical indication of Buddha’s descent from heaven in a palanquin moved on in the air by celestials. The _thirteenth_ (25 W. L., 2 after the _fourth_ angle) shows us _Mâyâ_ asleep, guarded by female servants, receiving the Buddha in a dream, in the shape of a white elephant carried by lotus-cushions, descending from heaven into her lap[32]. The _twenty-seventh_ (53 W. L. _eighth_ angle, 1) shows us _Mâyâ_ on her journey to her paternal home. According to time-honoured usage she goes there to wait for her confinement. However, she doesn’t come any farther than _Lumbini_ garden, and the following sculpture (55 W. L. angle _nine_, 1) tells us how she, while standing there under a tree, saw the Buddha born from her side, and how the latter _immediately took seven steps to each of the four zones of heaven, and as many steps to the zenith_, and that as a sign of his next authority over the _five_ parts of the world[33]. A rain of lotus flowers falls upon him, and lotus-plants open themselves under his feet on each step he takes. The crescent of the moon on the hind part of his head must refer to his heavenly or perhaps princely origin[34]. On the following sculptures we see the young king’s son, most times on his father’s knees, honoured by brahmins and laymen. His mother is no more to be seen, because she (as every Buddha-mother) died seven days after his birth. The thirty-first sculpture (61 W. L., 1 after the southern staircase) may refer to the brahmin who perceives the Buddha-tokens at Siddhârta’s body, and predicts his next greatness; however, in quite another sense than the king wishes. On 77 and 79 (W. L., angle _two_, 5 and 6) we perceive similar scenes, but this happens more after all. The _forty-ninth_ (97 W. L., angle _five_, 4) on the westside sketches us Siddhârta’s authority over others, and also as for manly strength. In a wedding match (_svayamvara_) he bends a bow no other can bend, and sends his arrow through seven cocoa trees. On this ground he gains the hand of his cousin Rashodara, the most beautiful girl of all Shâkya virgins[35]. Four other sculptures refer to the four encounters outside the palace, which, in spite of paternal precautions, showed him life’s misery. What then would be the use of these precautions to celestial beings who only revealed themselves to him, and to his equerry and guide in order to persuade the next Buddha in giving up all worldly greatness and domestic happiness; in leaving his father and family, and gaining strength in a life of retirement, of privation and expiation, of self-denial and self-command in order to finish his heavenly task: the redemption of suffering mankind!