The Buddhist Art of Nagarjunakonda, by ELIZABETH ROSEN STONE
Reviewed by Brown, Robert L.
The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.118 No.2 (April-June 1998)
pp.303-305
COPYRIGHT 1998 American Oriental Society
By ELIZABETH ROSEN STONE. Buddhist Tradition Series, vol. 25. Delhi:
MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1994.
The two Buddhist sites from Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati and
Nagarjunskonda, have justifiably held the attention of scholars-from
the earliest attempts to quantify, judge, and understand Indian art
in the eighteenth century up until today. The two books are welcome
additions to this research. While neither changes radically our
basic views of the art and architecture of the two early Buddhist
sites, they contribute many nuanced shifts in, and suggest different
approaches to, the extensive stone sculpture from these sites. As
always with Indian sculpture, there is a need to set up a
chronological schema, and both books spend considerable time doing
it. In addition, looking at the two books together helps to clarify
the interrelationship between the art of the two sites.
Amaravati is the earlier of the two. Knox's book is a catalogue of
sculpture from Amaravati in the British Museum, intended, according
to Jessica Rawson's brief preface, as a "general introduction" and
"descriptive catalogue" to the Museum's magnificent collection,
which had been newly installed in the Museum galleries along with
publication of the book in 1992. The catalogue illustrates each of
the 133 sculptures in excellent photographs, many in color and
covering entire pages.
There are four chapters of introduction before the catalogue itself.
These chapters give a history of the site; tell of how the Museum
acquired the collection; describe the great Stupa at the site from
which much of the sculpture comes; and, finally, give a system for
dating and typology of the sculpture. The typology, which consists
of categories of sculpted architectural elements (pillars,
crossbars, copings, and so forth), is used to organize the sculpture
in the catalogue, which is arranged more or less chronologically
within each type. Each object in the catalogue is carefully
described, the most helpful feature, I think, of the book. These
descriptions force the reader to look carefully at the often very
complex sculptures, pointing out details and characteristics that
would otherwise most likely be missed.
Looking at the introductory chapters, Knox ties the form the Great
Stupa finally took to the coming of the Satavahana rulers and the
period of prosperity that they brought. The dating of the Satavahana
kings, however, has long been debated - and for Amaravati they could
have begun ruling either in the first or the second century A.D.,
probably, Knox feels, later - around A.D. 130. The building more or
less ceased with their departure at the end of the third century,
with activities shifting to nearby Nagarjunakonda under the Iksvaku
rulers (the topic of Stone's book). But there was a Buddhist
monument at Amaravati from before the Satavahanas' coming, going
back to Mauryan times in the third century B.C. Knox thus rejects
Douglas Barrett's short chronology for the Amaravati sculpture,
which argued for it beginning only in the first century A.D.(1)
I think most scholars today would agree with Knox, but it is not
clear what was at the site so early. There are massive polished
granite pillars (one is 2.63 m tall) cut to accommodate crossbars
(Knox illustrates one in a photograph of ca. 1880), which appear to
be part of a large vedika that can apparently be dated to the third
century B.C. Some recently excavated fence pieces have, according to
I. K. Sarma, Asokan period inscriptions.(2) Knox does not say it,
but this would make it the earliest stone stupa fence of any size in
all of India, earlier by some 150 years than those of north India,
such as at Bharhut and Sanci, which appear to have replaced wooden
fences. In addition, that the pieces were polished is of great
importance if the polish indicates not only a Mauryan date, but also
Mauryan royal patronage. Add to this the find of Brahmi Prakrit
inscriptions on potsherds from Amaravati which relate to similar
finds from Sri Lanka that date by radiocarbon to 450-350 B.C.,(3)
and thus one or two centuries earlier than any previously known
South Asian inscriptions (and thus writing), and we are forced to
reassess the importance of South India and Sri Lanka to early South
Asian civilization and religion.
The Great Stupa at Amaravati itself was already largely destroyed
when Colonel Mackenzie, an Englishman, visited it in 1797. By then
it had been a source for building materials by local builders, and
the stone was also being burned to produce lime. The site was
cleared completely in 1880; an enormous number of loose sculptures
found their way over the years primarily either to England (and
eventually to the British Museum) or to the Madras Museum. There is
also considerable material today at the site museum. But with the
site's destruction we will never have a clear view of what was there
and how the sculpture was used, and much of what scholars must do,
as Knox attempts, is to reconstruct the monuments from what is left.
This is essentially what he does in the two chapters (III and IV) on
architecture and sculpture. His reconstruction of the form of the
Great Stupa basically follows Barrett's of 1954, and he illustrates
the reconstruction in drawings that follow those in the earlier
study. The stupa was axial, with a massive circular fence whose four
entrances brought the worshiper directly to the four projections of
the stupa's base on which five pillars were erected. These pillars
and projections, called ayaka-pillars and - platforms, are found
almost exclusively (something similar has been found in relief on
two votive stupas at Ratnagiri in Orissa) in Andhran stupa
architecture. The sculpture is on the fence and gates, and on stone
relief slabs that were stacked in rows against the body of the stupa
itself.
This is not the place to go into the details of the complicated
arrangement of the sculpture, but Knox's reconfiguration, as those
in the past, is largely speculative. Indeed, the organization he
suggests does not fit in many ways with the organization of
2 I. K. Sarma, "Early Sculptures and Epigraphs from South-East
India:3 See F. R. Allchin, The Archaeology of Early Historic South
Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1995), 176-79.
ROBERT L. BROWN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES