Sanchi

Sanchi's Great Stupa is one of India's oldest surviving Buddhist monuments.  It sits on a hilltop 30 miles northeast of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, and 6 miles south of Vidisha, a small town that was an important urban center at the turn of the common era. This photo shows the western gateway, and was taken on 12 November 2005. 

History: The original stupa was built by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (reigned 269-32 BCE), but enlarged to its present form in the 1st century CE.   The stupa fell into ruins and disappeared, and when first re-discovered it was severely damaged by treasure-hunters (who dug into the main vault, looking for buried treasure).  In the 1880s the Archeological Survey of India began to restore it; the major restoration was 1912-1919 under the leadership of Sir John Marshall.   The ASI still conserves the monument, and was doing some repairs when I visited in November 2005.  The ASI is also restoring Marshall house (at the base of the hill), in which Sir John lived during the restoration. 

Religious Significance: A stupa is a dome-shaped mound that mimics the funerary mounds used to mark the graves of great kings.  The earliest Buddhist stupas enshrined the Buddha's physical relics (bones and teeth), and asserted that he had status equal to royalty.  Another sign of this claim is the three-layer stone umbrella visible at the top of the stupa, since umbrellas  were royal symbols (unfortunately, these umbrellas often inadvertently also served as lightning rods).  The Sanchi stupa has a walkway built halfway up the mound on which the faithful would circle the stupa to pay homage to the Buddha.   Motion was always clockwise, since this kept one's right side (considered better) toward the relics at the center.  The perimeter wall has a gateway at each cardinal direction, and the carvings on these illustrate events from the Buddha's life and past lives.  As in medieval European cathedrals, these were used to impart the faith to a largely illiterate audience, and also to emphasize cultivating virtues and avoiding faults.   This relic casket at Sanchi's core did not contain relics of the Buddha himself, but of Sariputra and Maudgalyana, two of his earliest disciples.  

Symbolism: When the Sanchi stupa was built, the Buddha was not portrayed in human form.  Perhaps he was understood as having transcended human understanding, or maybe the early Buddhists wanted to highlight that he had transcended the condition of birth-and-death that marks embodied existence.  Whatever the reason, this early artwork portrays the Buddha by certain fixed symbols, each of which represents a pivotal event in his life.  These symbols are:

Acknowledgements:  The primary source for identifying the content in the scenes from these gateways (other than the markers at the site itself) is Debala Mitra's Sanchi, (2nd ed.) New Delhi: Archeological Survey of India, 1965.

Introduction

East Gate:  Exterior / Interior    West Gate: Exterior / Interior

South Gate: Exterior / Interior   North Gate: Exterior / Interior

Final Shots