A Source Book Of The Early Buddhist Inscriptions Of Amaravati

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Dr. Francis N. J. is Professor at the Department of History, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala. He was Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at the Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla; UGC Research Award Fellow at the Department of History, University of Calicut; and UK Visiting Fellow of the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

A Source Book of the Early Buddhist Inscriptions of Amaravati presents the available corpus of the donative epigraphs, recovered during the last two centuries, from the early Indian Buddhist monastic site of Amaravati in the south-eastern Deccan, for systematic analysis and categorization of the inscriptional evidence thereof in historical perspective. Analysis of the data from the epigraphs in the way it is done in this study helps understand the social, religious, cultural and economic roots of the early Buddhist art of Amaravati. Thus the artistic heritage of the early Buddhist Amarāvatī, which had been largely been museumised in India and abroad, can now be historicized and retrieved from the insularity into which the sculptures of Amarāvatī have been put to over the years. It tries to collate inscriptional evidence related to the dynamics of the inter-linkages between art and society, and art and religion in the south-eastern Deccan during the period between 300 BC 300 AD.

The book will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Buddhism, ancient Indian history, religion and South Asian studies.

The central aim of this study is to present the complete corpus of the donative epigraphs, recovered during the last two centuries, from the early Indian Buddhist monastic site of Amaravati in the south-eastern Deccan for a systematic analysis and a categorization of the inscriptional evidence thereof in historical perspective, and thus produce a source book of the rich and historically significant inscriptional data that are crucial for understanding the dynamics of the inter-linkages between art and society and art and religion in the south-eastern Deccan during the period between 300 BC and 300 AD.

Of all the early Buddhist sites in India, Amarāvatī (Latitude 16° 34" N.; Longitude 80° 17" E.), in District Guntur of Andhra Pradesh, has the longest history in terms of modern scholarship than that of other early Indian Buddhist monastic sites like Bhārhüt, Säñcī, Mathurā and Gandhāra, and this scholarship is older than archaeology in India, the formation of the Archaeological Survey of India and the first museum in India. Situated on the southern bank of the River Krishna, 35 kms to the north of the modern town of Guntur in District Guntur in the south-eastern Deccan, Amarāvatī has long been known to the students of early Indian history, archaeology and art ever since the pioneering efforts of Colonel Colin Mackenzie of the Trigonometrical Survey of India, towards the end of the 18th century, at salvaging the ruins of the Buddhist stupa of the site from further ruination. The site is famous for the Buddhist stupa and the marble relief-sculptures that once adorned the railings of the stupa. Ever since the importance of the site was brought to the notice of scholar-officials by Colonel Colin Mackenzie in the last decade of the 18th century, several archaeological excavations have been conducted at Amaravati and the adjacent village of Dharanikōța which together constitute the ancient site of Dhānyakataka or Dhamñakața. These excavations have brought to light the ruins of a stupa i.e., the mahācaitya as it is referred to in the epigraphs of the site, and a few smaller caityas; the sculptured slabs of limestone of the railings and other architectural parts of these caityas with short label inscriptions pot-sherds: coins and other artifacts, including various items of material culture of the different phases of occupation at the site.

Ever since the archaeological explorations and excavations at the site, the modern lives of these sculptures during the last two centuries have been not in situ, but largely outside the original site and context: and in consequence to the dismemberment of the mahacaitya, of which these sculptures formed various constituent parts, in the larger colonial context of the maturing of archaeology as a discipline and the emergence of the museum as an institution of cultural repository, the Amaravati marbles found their diasporic place in galleries spread out in the major museums in India and different parts of Europe and North America on the one hand and the fugitive place in some private collections on the other. The Government Museum, Chennai (formerly Madras); Indian Museum, Kolkotta (formerly Calcutta); National Museum, New Delhi, Archaeological Museum, Amaravati, the British Museum, London; Musée Guimet, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and some private art collections both in Europe and North America now share the corpus of the sculptures from Amaravati, the bulk being, however, in the museum collections at Chennai, London and Amaravati.

During the last two hundred years since the 'discovery of Amaravati, the sculptural art of the site has been variously assessed by historians of Indian art, objectively as well as with the bias characteristic of the Indological and Orientalist discourses of the 19th and early 20th centuries on the one hand and with the fervour, zeal and emotion characteristic of the Indian nationalist discourse on the other. In between these discourses lies the transformation of the Amarāvatī sculptures from the Elliot Marbles of the second half of the 19th century to the Amaravati marbles of the early 20th century. About 1819-20, Col. Colin Mackenzie wrote that the excavated slabs "... are remarkable for the beauty of the sculptures upon them... very neatly executed. Many a story is completely told with clearness and precision, and the characters accurately defined. The passions also are naturally exhibited and strongly marked; ... the carvings ... are far superior to any ancient or modern Hindu production." Robert Sewell, who had excavated the site in 1877, considered the sculptures the "priceless gems of Ancient Indian Art" which once constituted "the most beautiful Buddhist monument in all India. In the early 20th century, while appreciating the style of Amaravati sculptures, V. A. Smith considered the sculptural art of Amarāvatī as "... one of the most splendid exhibitions of artistic skill known in the history of the world." To E. B. Havell, the sculptures of Amaravati appeared to indicate two distinct groups of racial elements, one representing the "undeveloped indigenous Indian tradition" and the other "an importation from Western Asia" which was then "under Hellenic influence. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the commentator on Indian art and aesthetics par excellence, summarised that "It would hardly be possible to exaggerate the luxurious beauty or the technical proficiency of the Amaravati reliefs, this is the most voluptuous and delicate flower of Indian sculpture."" Benjamin Rowland thought that "Certainly from the point of view of complex and yet always coherent composition, of massing of chiaroscuro, and aliveness of surface treatment they have seldom been surpassed in the history of relief sculpture." Douglas Barrett, while treating the British Museum collection of the Amaravati sculptures as a whole for the first time, ranked them with the Elgin marbles and the Assyrian reliefs among the great possessions of the British Museum. More recently, Robert Knox of the Department of the Oriental Antiquities of the British Museum, London, located the stature of Amaravati art within the context of the art traditions of the ancient world thus: "The Amaravati sculptures rank with the highest products of the art of the great ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean.... In its great natural beauty the Amaravati collection may have an important role in drawing people to Indian art in general and assist in crossing boundaries into a world which often seems inaccessible and difficult to understand.

As an early Buddhist site, Amaravati has the unique advantage (1) of having an archaeological record of a cultural contact with the geography of early Buddhism, which starts from not later than the 4th century BC onwards, that is, immediately after those events in north-eastern India that are generally associated with the Buddha and the early growth of the movement; (2) of having been the focal point of legendary and mythicized accounts as the sacred spot with which the life of the Buddha was connected in Buddhist hagiography; and, (3) as the centre where the subsequent evolution of the dharma took place." One of the earliest themes of sculptural representation at the site purported to present the worship of the Amaravati caitya with the canonised and mythified pedigree of events in the life of the Master in a narrative style. The base of the mahacaitya goes back archaeologically to the 3rd century BC, whereas the epigraphic reference to vinayadhara, dhammakathika, etc. supports the association of the site with the textual tradition of the Buddhist canons. A conscious process of appropriating the antiquity of and attributing sacredness to the site by the various Buddhist monastic or schismatic traditions, over the years, is also noticeable pertaining to Amaravati.