Buddhist Art and Architecture in India

As Leoshko demonstrates in her Sacred Traces: British Explorations of Buddhism in South Asia (2003), the early development of historical study of Buddhist art and architecture in India is closely linked to the British discovery of Buddhism. It began with the reports of the explorations of the Buddhist sites in northern India conducted by Alexander Cunningham and his colleagues under the aegis of the Archaeological Survey of India, during the 1880s. The first and the most important site that received attention was Bodhgaya, the site of Buddha’s enlightenment, followed by other sites related to the historical Buddha’s biography. Surviving art and architecture from these pilgrimage sites along with artistic productions of internationally renowned Indian monastic centers such as Nālandā and Vikramaśīla, form an important part of the basic canon of Buddhist art and architecture of India. No artistic and architectural remain seems to date to the time of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni (c. 6th century bce). The remains of some Buddhist stūpas (Buddhist relic mounds) survive from the following period, but the earliest major corpus of Buddhist artifacts belong to the reign of Aśoka the Great of the Mauryan Empire (268–231 bce). Early Buddhist art of India included many pan-Indic religious images, such as Yakṣa and Yakṣiṇī, often introduced at a stūpa (Buddha’s relic mound) site, to guard the threshold between the sacred and the mundane as symbols of fertility and prosperity. Buddhist stūpas were the main objects of devotion and artistic expression in ancient India. Until the first two centuries of our Common Era, the main body of material for the study of Buddhist art and architecture comes from stūpa sites where we find delightful and creative renderings of visual narratives about the Buddha’s biography and jātakas (stories of Buddha’s previous lives) in stone. Image making gained momentum during the first two centuries of the Common Era as an effective mean for accruing religious merits (puṇyam), and from then on we see an explosion in the production of images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas (enlightened being), especially in Gandhara (modern-day Pakistan) and in the areas around Mathura (in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India). Except for a few well-known legendary examples, such as Aśoka’s and Kaniṣka’s, exclusive royal patronage of Buddhist establishments in ancient India was exception to the rule. The development of Buddhist sites other than those around the pilgrimage sites is often associated with trade and commerce. Many early Buddhist sites went through centuries of expansion and renovations, with some lasting for a millennium. From the 9th century, general patronage of Buddhist establishments decreased in other parts of India, but eastern India (Bihar and Orissa in India and Bangladesh) remained a stronghold for Buddhist activities until the 13th century. Buddhist art and architecture of India provided inspirations and artistic references for the construction of countless Buddhist artifacts and edifices in other parts of the Buddhist world throughout history. With the revival of Buddhism in 20th-century India, artistic expressions from various parts of the Buddhist world as well as from India’s own heritage now return to inform and shape the new phase of Buddhist art and architecture in India.