Sculpture

This sculpture represents a famous incident in the life of the Buddha when he subdued the drunk and enraged elephant Nalagiri which had been unleashed on him by the evil king Ajatasattu. Attendant monks look on while the newly tamed elephant kneels before the Buddha. This relief was excavated, together with others illustrating the different scenes from the Buddha's life, in the vicinity of the Shwe-nyaung-bin-yo monastery at Hmawza, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1938-9.

Stylistically these reliefs appear to provide the bridge between the Pyu art of the ancient Sri Ksetra and the Mon-Burmese art of Pagan.