The valley of river Krishna in the eastern Deccan, in present-day Andhra Pradesh, was a fertile land. Since ancient times, it saw the blossoming of art infused with the life of the spirit. Here, the bounty of cotton textiles attracted Romans and others from afar. A prosperous cosmopolitan culture developed. As everywhere in India then, the philosophic quest preoccupied the people of this land.
The search was for that which was beyond the material aims in life. All permanent structures, art and monuments were dedicated to this eternal quest of the people. The fertile valley of the Krishna River was the cradle of civilization in the eastern Deccan. This area became one of the greatest centers of Buddhism, and over 140 early Buddhist sites have been listed in this region. Indeed, this river valley is a vast land of stupas and Buddhist caves.
The caves at Guntupalli, are among the earliest of all Buddhist caves. An early cave at Kuntupalli has a façade which is directly reminiscent of the Lomas Rishi caves at Barabar. Those were made in the 3rd century BC by Emperor Ashoka and his grandson Dashratha for the Ajivika sect of ascetics.
Jagaya Peta on a tributary of the Krishna River had many stupas. Buddhism flourished here for 500 years up to the 4th century AD. Worship at some of the stupas continued till the 14th century. The caves and stupas of this valley reflect developments in Buddhism and its art over several hundreds of years.
We also see a representation of the happy coexistence of different schools of thought in both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. The sites of Gummadiduru, Gantashala, Goli, Bhattiprolu, Guddiwada, Ramatirtham, and Salihundam are among the numerous that reflect the rich Buddhist history of present-day Andhra Pradesh. At sites like Panigiri, 110 km eastwards of Hyderabad, sculptures are still being found from under the ground.
The Krishna Valley must have been an enchanted place, with hundreds of stupas and with numberless sculpted images made with the hands of devotion. The Buddha's site of Amaravati is on the bank of the river Krishna, next to the ancient capital of Dharani Kota. The history of the stupas at this site covers at least 1400 years from the time of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BC.
By the first century BC, the stupa was enlarged and sculpted limestone slabs with narrative sculptures were added. A drum slab of the stupa shows the Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. The footsteps and the parasols indicate his presence.
The shallow relief, broad faces, turbans and heavy earrings are reminiscent of other Shunga period art. In the second century AD, the Satvahanas extended their rule to the eastern Deccan. Under them, The sculptural relief of the magnificent stupa reached its culminating phase. The entire stupa was covered with shimmering limestone slabs with exquisite sculpture. An ornate stone vedika was also added.
Today, only a mound remains of the Maha Stupa, or Great Stupa, as it's called in inscriptions. In its time, Its glory was known throughout the Buddhist world. Fortunately, we have an idea of what the stupa looked like from depictions of it in the sculptural reliefs. The Maha Stupa was 162 feet in diameter. The railings were made 15 feet away.
The railings were richly sculpted. Their pillars, about ten feet high, had full-blown lotuses in the center and half-lotuses on the top and the bottom. The lotus, which rises in its beauty from murky waters, is a Pan-Indian symbol of purity and transcendence.
On the inner surface of the pillars were made narrative carvings of the life of the Buddha. The stories are told in greater detail here than was done earlier at Sanchi. From the first century AD onwards, artists in North India, around Mathura and in the northwestern Gandhara region, had begun to depict deities in human form. Earlier, symbols had been used to indicate the presence of Buddhas, and Jainathirthankaras, artists in the western and in the eastern Deccan took more time to break away from previous conventions of the art in which personalities had not been depicted. It is only in the second century AD that the Buddha was depicted in art in the Deccan.
The coping of the railing is fully adorned with eternal themes. Often a thick and luxuriant garland is depicted. It is reminiscent of the vine, of the fullness and bounty of nature which was seen in the 2nd century BC at Bahr Hut and later at Sanchi.
It is carried by turbaned youths who would represent the urbane city dwellers of the prosperous Krishna Valley. On entering the hallowed enclosure to circumambulate the great stupa, the worshipper saw exquisite carvings on both sides of him. On his right, the drum of the sacred stupa had slabs that were about six feet high. Sculpted dome slabs rose another eleven and a half feet above the drum.
A world of Buddhist narratives was created through which the worshipper moved as he went around the holy stupa. Sculpted scenes, such as the birth of the Buddha, would transport the viewer far from the everyday concerns of the mundane world. His soul would be lifted. in response to the beauty and grace before him.
In the rapt attention and divine contemplation on the faces of the attendant figures, the artists appear to have portrayed the devotion within themselves. It is a realm of gentleness and beauty which awakens the best within us. The Chitra Sutra, the ancient treatise on art-making, states that the purpose of art is to transform us through the presentation of harmony and grace, to show us a glimpse of the eternal which underlies all of creation.
The reliefs of the second century at Amravati are deeply cut, which gives them the appearance of being fully in the round. The depth of the cutting permits the overlapping of figures on two and even three planes. Each figure is individual and possessed of life and movement of its own. The variety of poses is infinite.
The artists are confident and appear to discover new possibilities of the depiction of the human form. There is a vitality and rhythm in the closely grouped compositions. The exquisite reliefs of Amravati are similar in many ways to the art of the Buddhist paintings of Ajanta in the Western Deccan.
There is a supple grace, and the lines and expressions convey a quality of introspection, a preoccupation with that which is beyond the worldly realm. In this tradition of art, activity is contained within a sense of grace, which prevails upon all forms. The figures portray a quality of surrender to the harmony of existence. These are not heroic individuals struggling against the vicissitudes of life, but beings who recognize their place as a part of the whole of existence.
It is this view of life which provides the ease and joyousness to the figures. The sumptuous richness of the carvings is a fulsome celebration of the divinity which is all around us. The exquisite phase of the art of the Amravati stupa was under the rule of the Satvahana rulers.
They were devoted to Brahmanical deities and were fully benevolent to the Buddha's Sangha. However, as in Central and Western India, this was an art of the people. The individual pillars and sculptures were the donations of lay people and the monastic community. Nuns outnumber monks in the donative inscriptions, and many of them hold high religious titles. Everywhere in ancient Indian inscriptions, it is seen that women enjoyed a high economic and social status.
Besides the Buddha figures in the reliefs, a number of freestanding Buddhas have been found at Amravati. and other sites of the Andhra region. They date from the 3rd century AD onwards.
These are quite different from the Buddha figures that were being made at Mathura and Gandhara and show an independent artistic conception. These were to be the models for the Buddhas of Southeast Asia. While the glorious Mahastupa at Amravati was made and sculpted in different stages from the 1st century BC till the 3rd century AD, many other stupas were made in the Krishna River Valley.
Their railings and drum slabs are a vast surviving corpus of the early art of Buddhism. In the 3rd century AD, the power of the Satvahanas began to fade. However, the tradition of art which had blossomed under them continued. The Ikshvakus came to power in the second quarter of the 3rd century and established a new capital called Vijayapura, or the City of Victory, in the Nagarjuna Konda Valley. The great Buddhist teacher, Nagarjuna, One of the most important proponents of Mahayana philosophy was known to have lived here in the 1st or 2nd century AD.
Nagarjuna Konda means the hill of Nagarjuna. The area continued as a most important center for the development of Buddhist philosophy under the Ikshvakus. A large number of monastic establishments were founded here for the residence, study and worship of at least four different monks.
sects of Buddhists. Unlike Amravati, the remains at Nagarjuna Konda have been systematically excavated and securely dated through inscriptions to the third and fourth centuries. The original site was submerged by the making of a dam in recent years.
However, The edifices were carefully reconstructed and preserved for the future. In the Indic tradition, theology was never confined by dogmatic beliefs. Early literature is full of accounts of public intellectual discussions between teachers of different sects.
This climate in which different sects and philosophies coexisted is seen in the remains at Nagarjuna Konda. Chaitya grihas with stupas are made next to shrines with statues of the Buddha. Worshippers of both would have shared the common vihara or monastic residence. The style of the sculpture here is very similar to the last phase at Amravati. The figures are lively and full of movement.
They are cut deep into the stone. The tradition of the depiction of the stupa is continued here, on sculptural slabs on the monument. The many finely made depictions here include the scene of the birth of the Buddha.
Queen Maya, the mother of the Buddha, gave birth to him while standing under a shawl tree. The great departure of Prince Siddhartha, when he leaves the palace of his father and his princely life, is depicted. Divine beings hold up the hooves of his horse Kanthaka. so that he may ride out of the palace silently. The creative force of nature is expressed in the yaksis, whose mere touch causes the trees to blossom.
These continue as a theme from the earliest stupa railings of Bahrhut. As in the case of all major Buddhist monuments since the 2nd century BC, these, at Nagarjuna Konda, were made under the rule of kings who worshipped Brahmanical deities themselves. However, in keeping with Indic traditions of Dharma, they were fully benevolent to institutions of all faiths. As was often the case, some female members of the royal family were devoted to Buddhism and made personal donations to the monasteries.
A number of Brahminical temples were also made at Nagarjuna Konda during the period. However, none of them have survived. The ultimate belief was in the oneness of the whole of creation. The sculptures were made, as donative inscriptions proclaim, for the benefit of all sentient beings. The artist continues to present before us the grace which underlies all that is around us, that grace which is also deep within each of us, and we respond to it when it is presented before us in art.
Earlier, The art brought to us the vital and living world of nature, in which man was only one part of its existence. By now the focus had shifted. Some of the earlier attention to the joy and frolicsome world of natural creation had been left behind.
The emphasis had now come more on the life of men and women. Sankham Saranam Gacchami Buddha Saranam Gacchami Dambam Saranam