Ubiquitous Trees and Snakes—Early Buddhist Imagery of Āndhradeśa
The art history of Buddhist India has traditionally been built on a linear study that traces its development from Mathura (the ‘City of the Gods’) to Gandhara in the northwest and east to Sarnath, where a ‘pan-Gupta’ style coalesced and went on to inspire the medieval artists of Bihar and Bengal for its last flourish in India and travelled beyond northern India to leave a lasting legacy across all of Asia. Another perspective is presented here, shifting the paradigm away from the legacy of Greater Magadha in north India, where the historical Buddha was born, taught, and died, to the south. This region, and the roads leading to it, were known in the early texts as Dakṣiṇāpatha. There the Buddha’s teachings spread and flourished in the early centuries BCE into the mid-1st millennium CE. The focus shifts to the art of the Satavahana and Ikshvaku dynasties, which ruled successively across much of the Deccan in this period in the region then known as Āndhradeśa, encompassing the modern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka. Embedded in this realignment is a closer examination of the pre-Buddhist origins of Buddhist imagery. The emergence of the Buddha image in the religious landscape of early India drew on deeply rooted traditions of image-making that are the oldest known in the subcontinent. The cults of nature deities, of tree and snake spirits—yakshas, yakshis and nagas, naginis—played a central role in the beginnings of this figurative sculptural tradition and continued to do so long after the appearance of the fully realized iconic Buddha. Elements of these traditions persist in the visual repertoire of devotional imagery in India down to the present day.
The early Buddhist art of Āndhradeśa, in the southeastern Deccan, is dominated by both symbolic and figurative representations of the Buddha and by the depiction of elaborate narratives—jātakas and avadānas—recounting the lives of past bodhisattvas and that of the historical Buddha. Yet there is another, no less pervasive presence in early Andhra Buddhist art, that of tree and snake imagery. The monastics and artists responsible for the southern stupa privileged these two iconographic devices above all others in its adornment. The quintessential stupa image unique to the Deccan was of one honoured by a tree canopy, with its relics guarded by nagas. The referencing of pre-Buddhist nature cults permeates the visual repertoire of the stupa arts of the Deccan in ways that are far more invasive than in early northern Buddhism. In an extraordinary visual play, the tree foliage often transformed into a cluster of parasols, as seen in an early drum panel from Amaravati (fig. 1). Here the high drum and globular dome is surmounted by a square railing enclosure (harmikā), from which issues forth a flourish of honorific umbrellas, forming a tree-like canopy.
The stupa serves as the relic-house. It embodied the memory of the Buddha and evokes his living word, the dharma, through the presence of the relics (Pali dhātu). The relics enshrined within thus served to both memorialize the Buddha and celebrate his teachings. The conceptual interchangeability of stupa, dharma, and relics underscores the essential unity of vision informing early Buddhist thought: that all lead to the essence of Buddhism, the path-defining teachings.
1
Stupa drum panel with protective naga
India, Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati; Sada dynasty, second half of 1st century
Limestone; height 145 cm
British Museum, London
Photo courtesy of British Museum
2
Yaksha
India, Madhya Pradesh; Shunga period, c. 50 BCE
Sandstone; height 88.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Jeffrey B. Soref
The Indian landscape was understood to be inhabited by powerful spirits that had assumed natural forms—trees, rocks and mountains, ponds and rivers. Water was the most potent element, and the trees nurtured by its life-giving power were much favoured by yakshas, whilst nagas presided over the waters and their subterranean treasures. These demigods were ubiquitous in the subcontinent and constituted the core repertoire of divine forces in early India, their presence reaching back into a pre-Buddhist past.
Yakshas were appropriated into the service of Buddhism primarily as guardians, seen early in the porches of the rock-cut viharas in the Western Ghats and positioned at the entrances to the circumambulation pathways (pradakṣiṇapatha) around stupas, as at Kanaganahalli and elsewhere in the Deccan. Free-standing images of yakshas are amongst the most wondrous sculptures produced in early India, masterpieces of plastic art. A yaksha with raised arms, likely from the Vidisha region of the western Deccan, displays all the sophistication that these Satavahana-era stone sculptors had developed by the early centuries BCE (fig. 2). These monumental free-standing icons came to embody powers engendering prosperity and wealth, and so attracted the patronage of merchant and guilds. Two of the earliest monumental yakshas bear inscriptions naming them as Maṇibhadra, ‘the excellent one with jewels’. Though now damaged, they almost certainly held a purse, the money bag later associated with Kubera, as protectors of the earth’s riches. The artisans responsible for these sculptures in turn applied their skills to the production of Buddhist art when required, again funded by the mercantile and craft-guild communities who formed the core of Buddhism’s emerging patronage network. The spread of Buddhism to southern India and the expansion of the trading networks combined with the emergence of fortified towns were part of a shared process, mutually built on a rising tide of economic prosperity.
Southern India was home to some of the greatest early Buddhist monasteries of India. Today we look to Bharhut, Sanchi, and Amaravati when we seek to understand the majesty of the earliest monastic architecture and its adornment. The enclosure railing (vedika) at Bharhut, the ceremonial gateways (toraṇas) at Sanchi, and the early-phase railing copings at Amaravati are the earliest and best preserved of their kind from the early Buddhist world. They are rich in visual narrative, using their surfaces as tableaux for the storytelling that made Buddhism accessible and meaningful to a wide community. Translating thought into visuality was the task of the stone sculptors under the direction of learned monks well versed in the efficacious narratives that are witnessed in stupa decoration from the 2nd century BCE onwards. Both the stupa drums and the circumambulation path enclosure railings, along with ceremonial gateways served as the strategic settings for this visual instruction.
3
Railing post
Inscribed ‘Naga Mucarido’ and name of a female donor ‘mahāyasā’
India, Maharashtra, Pauni; Satavahana dynasty, 2nd–1st century BCE
Sandstone; height 104 cm
National Museum, New Delhi
Photo Courtesy of the National Museum
4
Honouring the dharmachakra and nagas protecting the relics at Rāmagrāma
India, Telangana, Dhulikatta; Satavahana dynasty, 1st century BCE
Limestone; height 114 cm
Amaravati Heritage Centre and Museum, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh
Photo courtesy of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Andhra Pradesh
The earliest depictions of Buddha veneration are distinguished by the absence of the Buddha in figurative form. However, he is not intended to be regarded as ‘absent’ but rather very much present, represented in an aniconic form. His presence is evoked by a variety of auspicious signs: an empty throne-cum-offering table, a pair of footprints (buddhapāda), or a dharma-wheel (dharmachakra), often in combination with a depiction of the Bodhi (‘Wisdom’) tree surmounted by an honorific parasol. Amongst the earliest such representations is a railing post recovered from the largely lost stupa site at Pauni, in Maharashtra, dated to 2nd–1st century BCE (fig. 3). The protection of the Buddha-throne by the great snake-spirit the Nāga Mucalinda (so named in the inscription), combines all the elements of the earliest Buddhist representations. The naga’s habitat is the watery pond filled with lotus, from which he has emerged to protect the Buddha, coiling his body to raise the Buddha above threatening floodwaters and sheltering him with his five hoods; a venerated tree—festooned with garlands—rises above. In the adjoining scenes are yakshas represented as male worshippers, with hands crossed on the chests in supplication. They wear the asymmetrically arranged turbans that are a distinguishing feature of Satavahana dress. Above are single cell shrines with railing, best understood as kuṭi, the rustic shelters with thatched roofs used by forest-dwelling ascetics, which were absorbed into monastic architecture as the Buddha’s residence, the Gandhakuṭī, popularly translated as the Perfumed Chamber.
These elements of stupa décor—with nagas protecting the relics within—are encapsulated in a spectacular stupa platform (āyaka) panel from Dhulikatta in the Karimnagar district of Telangana (fig. 4). Standing 1.14 metres in height, it combines the relic-protecting nagas with yaksha worshippers venerating the teachings in the form of a dharma-wheel surmounted on a lion-supported column (dharmachakrastambha). Each of the male worshippers is richly dressed with large-scale jewellery, a waist skirt drawn up and tied in great swags of cloth, and the characteristic turban of the era. The reverence that they exude is echoed by the four nagas that have woven their bodies around the drum of the stupa in a protective net. This naga configuration references a moment following the division of the Buddha’s corporeal relics into eight parts by the Brahmin Droṇa when, according to one version, the nagas laid claim to the eighth portion after the Rāmagrāma stupa housing them collapsed into a river during flooding and the relics came into their possession. This proved to be the legend much favoured by artists in the Satavahana Deccan.
An extraordinarily sophisticated rendering of the naga protecting the Buddha appears in multiple panels at the Dhulikatta stupa (fig. 5). Each panel is dominated by the majestic body of the five-hooded naga, cradling within its swelling coils the diminutive throne and footprints that evoke the Buddha-presence. The naga wears a large throat-jewel (maṇikaṇṭha), emblematic of the riches over which he presides in the water realm. The gentle patterning of pipal-tree leaves above reminds us that this event is taking place near Bodhgaya, the sacred locale of the Buddha’s Awakening. A single parasol poised above honours the Buddha as a spiritual monarch.
5
Stupa panel with Nāga Mucalinda protecting the Buddha
Inscribed in Southern Brahmi Prakrit: ‘Gift of Samā, mother of the notable gahapati Pathala: an Ā[yāka-slab?]’
India, Telangana, Dhulikatta; Satavahana dynasty, 1st century BCE
Limestone; height 140 cm
Archaeology Museum, Karimnagar, Telangana
Photo courtesy of Department of Heritage, Telangana
6
Yakshi
India, Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati; Early Satavahana dynasty, mid-2nd century BCE
Limestone; height 78.7 cm
Archaeological Museum, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh
Photo courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India
These two panels, from the same sculptural programme, would have been viewed in wonder by worshippers as they processed around the relic-stupa at Dhulikatta. The placement on the stupa drum and offering platform at the level of the circumambulation path would have ensured that these images were in immediate proximity to those who walked the pathway. The power and grace of these images would have been intense. Excavation photographs from 1974 reveal that the naga panels were flanked by near life-size standing yakshis, female nature-spirits, offering lotus. A near contemporary yakshi panel from the first phase of limestone decoration at Amaravati, the most famous of the Andhra Great Stupas (mahācetiyas), depicts such semi-divine spirits in the guise of beautiful women, adorned with the rich jewellery of the day (fig. 6). As seen here, her full breasts and broad hips accentuated by a heavily bejewelled girdle speak of fecundity; her braided hair is drawn into a massive bun, and she wears a prominent forehead jewel (lālāṭika), large earplugs (the concentric rings suggest ivory), and a six-strand neck torque. The deep cutting of the features to ensure legibility in the strong sunshine echoes those seen at the early 2nd century BCE stupa railing at Bharhut, with which it is broadly contemporary. The sculpting conventions shared here point to a pan-Deccan style already prevalent across the southern Buddhist diaspora in the early centuries BCE.
Two recent excavations of stupa sites in the Deccan have transformed our understanding of early Buddhist monastic art in the south. The earliest is that at Kanaganahalli, a stupa named by inscription as Adhālaka mahācetiya. It is located within the orbit of the ancient fortified urban settlement of Sannati, on the Bhima River in northern Karnataka. Its foundation date is unknown, but the stupa underwent successive renovations from the 1st century BCE to the mid-3rd century CE, witnessed in a succession of stylistic shifts in decoration. It was clad with 1.5-metre-high limestone panels providing a rich sculptural tableau of narrative scenes, most with identifying inscription glosses. Quarries are still active in the district, suggesting that the limestone was locally sourced. Over 300 inscriptions have been identified and published to date, principally by the Archaeological Survey of India and by Oskar von Hinüber (Poonacha, 2011; Nakanishi and von Hinüber, 2014). Remarkably, up to ten of the known thirty Satavahana kings are depicted in named portrait scenes, providing the most comprehensive genealogy of that dynasty known. Further, a group portrait panel is identified as rāyā asoko (King Ashoka). This is the earliest confirmed depiction of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (r. c. 268–232 ) known in Indian art. Many of the sculptural panels provide unique glimpses into contemporary monastic life and politics. A drum panel depicts wealthy laymen visiting the monastery (fig. 7). They appear to be ascending from bathing ghats, suggested by the double stair terracing, to the monastery above. They wear cloaks secured with large round clasps and wear massive ear ornaments. We might speculate that they are the donors named in the accompanying inscription belonging to the distant region of Mahisēka, perhaps located in the southern Deccan.
That the authorities responsible for Kanaganahalli monastery were eager to include depiction of past Satavahana rulers was likely an attempt to add status to the monastery, serving to attract further patronage. Certainly the inscriptions tell us that it attracted wealthy supporters from afar, especially merchants and bankers. To depict a major political event is harder to explain, as in a panel depicting King Puḷumāvi (r. c. 85–125) surrendering the city of Ujjain, probably to the Western Kṣatrapa ruler Castana (r. c. 78–130) (fig. 8). The event memorialized here is a peaceful transfer of power, as the contestants were probably related by marriage alliances. Puḷumāvi is seen in the act of pouring a lustration from a spouted ewer (bhṛṅgāra) into the outstretched hand of the recipient, marking the consecration of the transaction through the agency of water (abhiṣeka). Elsewhere at Kanaganahalli, other kings are depicted performing the same ritual act of giving with monks as the recipients (see Hinüber article in this volume).
7
Panel showing visitors to the monastery
Inscribed ‘Pious gift of a [drum] panel by - - - sila from Mahisēka along with his wife and daughter’
India, Karnataka, Kanaganahalli; Satavahana dynasty, early 2nd century
Limestone; height c. 100 cm
Kanaganahalli Archaeological Site, Sannati, Karnataka
Photo courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India
8
King Puḷumāvi surrendering the city of Ujjain
India, Karnataka, Kanaganahalli; Satavahana dynasty, early 2nd century
Limestone; height c. 100 cm
Kanaganahalli Archaeological Site, Sannati, Karnataka
Photo courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India
Excavations undertaken in 2002–3 at a granite hilltop location at the village of Phanigiri in the Suryapet district of Telangana revealed an extraordinary hoard of sculptural elements, seemingly buried for protection at the time of the monastery’s abandonment, presumed to be around mid-1st millennium (fig. 9). The finds are amongst the most spectacular of the past fifty years in stupa archaeology: they include the double-sided sculpted architraves of a monumental ceremonial gateway (toraṇa), the most complete ever recorded in ancient Andhra. Only a single makara (mythological sea monster) terminal of uncertain provenance had come to light previously in the region (Guy, 2023, pp. 246–7). At Phanigiri, three substantial sections had survived, each with a different animal terminal: lion, elephant, and griffin, all bracketed by a wide-mouthed makara. The one with a lion depicts on its end panel the birth of the Buddha scene, with Queen Maya attended by the devas (fig. 10). Broadly contemporary with the extensive stupa remains from the Ikshvaku capital of Vijayapurī (today’s Nagarjunakonda), the Phanigiri discovery widens our understanding of the scale and quality of monastic art production in the late 3rd and 4th centuries. That numerous other monastic sites were similarly lavishly endowed is almost certain, but the rarity of such a discovery underscores just how much has been lost to natural attrition and human avarice.
The brilliance of the sculptors of Phanigiri may best be witnessed in two singular masterpieces. A commemorative stele that depicts over three registers the Great Renunciation is unique in the history of early Buddhist art (fig. 11). Especially remarkable is the conceptualization of the hair-relic scene, represented as a turban, with the front cockade serving as the setting for the scene of the devas carrying the Bodhisattva’s severed hair and turban to Indra’s heaven. Note the lower framing device, with a massive gemstone bracketed by lions issuing from the jaws of makara, a miniaturized rendering of those represented on the toraṇa architraves from the same monastery.
Together with the architraves and other architectural elements—sections of āyaka copings, panelling— is the unique masterpiece of Phanigiri, the near life-size sculpture of a princely figure identified here as a mahāpurusa, or Great Man (fig. 12). This marks an important staging moment in the evolution of figure types in Andhra Buddhist art, from the yaksha to what was later reconceptualized sculpturally as a bodhisattva. Likely one of a pair flanking an entranceway, this is an unprecedented masterpiece of the Ikshvaku sculptor’s art.
9
View of lower courtyard at Phanigiri monastery during excavation in 2002–3, revealing toraṇa gateway and male torso in situ
Department of Heritage, Telangana
Photo courtesy of Catharine Becker
10
Gateway architrave with lion makara
India, Telangana, Phanigiri; Ikshvaku dynasty, 3rd–4th century
Limestone; height 59 cm
Phanigiri, Telangana
Photo courtesy of the Department of Heritage, Telangana
The late 3rd century also marks the moment when large-scale and highly sophisticated sculptures of Buddhas begin to appear in the south. A standing Buddha from Nelakondapalli is among the most spectacular recovered to date in the ancient territories of Andhra (fig. 13). It is one of many such stone Buddha images recorded from the site during excavations undertaken at the Great Stupa mound between 1976 and 1978. Quarried limestone blocks and flaking in the vicinity indicate the activity of the stone workshops responsible. Nelakondapalli was also the source of the largest bronze Buddha image recovered to date in the Deccan, measuring 52 centimetres in height. Dating to the late 5th or 6th century, it bears witness to a late phase of active patronage of Buddhism in the region, as a resurgence of Brahmanism reasserted itself in the south. The Chinese pilgrim-monk Xuanzang (602–64) observed in the 640s that around the Chalukyan capital of Veṅgīpura (today’s Eluru, Godavari district, in Andhra Pradesh) some Buddhist monasteries were still active, though outnumbered by monasteries of the Brahmanical ‘heretics’. He lamented that many monasteries farther south were mostly deserted. The rapid demise of Buddhism in southern India had followed swiftly after the defeat of the Vishnukundins by the Chalukyas in 624, some twenty years before Xuanzang’s poignant visit.
John Guy is the Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mass.
The exhibition ‘Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE’ is on show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 21 July to 13 November 2023, and at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, 22 December to 14 April 2024.
The exhibition is made possible by Reliance Industries Limited, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global and the Fred Eychaner Fund. Major support is provided by the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund for Asian Art Exhibitions. Additional funding is provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will host the international symposium ‘Early Buddhist Art in India and Its Global Reach’ on 29–30 September 2023. The symposium is made possible by the Fred Eychaner Fund. Learn more at metmuseum.org.
11
Stele celebrating the Great Renunciation, excavated 2003
India, Telangana, Phanigiri; Ikshvaku dynasty, 3rd–4th century Limestone; height 128 cm
State Museum, Hyderabad
Photo courtesy of Department of Heritage, Telangana
12
Mahāpuruṣa figure
India, Telangana, Phanigiri; Ikshvaku dynasty, late 3rd–4th century
Limestone; height 193 cm
Phanigiri, Telangana
Photo courtesy of Department of Heritage, Telangana
13
Buddha
India, Telangana, Nelakondapalli; Ikshvaku dynasty, 3rd century
Limestone; height 103 cm
State Museum Hyderabad
Photo Courtesy of Department of Heritage, Telangana
Selected bibliography
John Guy, Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, New York, 2023.
Maiko Nakanishi and Oskar von Hinüber, ‘Kanaganahalli Inscriptions’, Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, vol. XVII, 2014.
K. P. Poonacha, Excavations at Kanaganahalli (Sannati), Taluk Chitapur, Dist. Gulbarga, Karnataka, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 106, New Delhi, 2011.
Peter Skilling, ‘New Discoveries from South India: The Life of the Buddha at Phanigiri, Andhra Pradesh’, Arts Asiatiques 63 (2008): 96–118.
Monika Zin, The Kanaganahalli Stupa: An Analysis of the 60 Massive Slabs Covering the Dome, New Delhi, 2018.
This article featured in our Jul/Aug 2023 print issue.
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