The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

THE SUNGA PERIOD 79
mortal body of the Buddha who had vanished
into the void of Nirvana. It followed that the
stupa itself came to be regarded as an outward
and visual manifestation of the Buddha. By conferring
on the relics of Buddha the sepulchral
monument reserved for royal burials, Asoka can
be said to have promulgated the concept of the
Buddha as Cakravartin or world ruler.
It is definitely known that elaborate geomantic
ceremonies determined the orientation
of the stupa, and the most precise system of
proportions fixed the measurement of the whole
and its every member. It is for this reason that
the stupas have something of the same mathematical
perfection of sheer architectural form
and mass that we find in the pyramids. The
architectural effectiveness of the stupa depends
on the alternation and balance of round and
square shapes. The completely undynamic
character of stupa architecture is thoroughly
expressive of its function of enclosing and
guarding the relic and its symbolism of the
fixed cosmic structure. Over and above its
purely funerary function, the stupa and its
accessories had come to be invested with an
elaborate symbolism, stemming in part at least
from the cosmography of western Asia. Like the
Mesopotamian ziggurat, the basic concept of
the stupa was an architectural diagram of the
cosmos. Above the square or circular base of the
stupa rose the solid and hemispherical dome or
anda, which was intended as an architectural
replica of the dome of heaven, enclosing the
world-mountain rising from earth to heaven. In
the architecture of the stupa the presence of this
world-mountain was suggested only by the
harmikd, a balcony-like member at the summit
of the mound that typified the Heaven of the
Thirty-three Gods located at the summit of the
cosmic peak enclosed within the dome of the
sky. The symbolism was completed by the mast
or yastt which rose from the crown of the dome.
This member typified the world axis extending
from the infra-cosmic waters to the empyrean,
and in certain stupas its symbolical function
was made even more specific by an actual
wooden mast penetrating the solid masonry
dome. Above the dome proper this mast served
as a support for tiers of circular umbrellas or
chattras symbolizing the devalokas or heavens of
the gods culminating in the heaven of Brahma.
The stupa was in a sense also a sort of architectural
body replacing the mortal frame which
Sakyamuni left behind at his Nirvana. The
concept of the architecture of the stupa as a
cosmic diagram and its animation by the enshrining
of relics probably had its origin in the
altar of Vedic times, which was animated at its
dedication by the insertion of a human sacrifice,
whose soul was regarded as a replica of the
spirit of the Cosmic Man, Mahapurusa. 2
Just as these concepts of Mesopotamian and
Vedic origin determined the form and function
of the stupa-mound, so the architecture of the
surrounding railing and the actual ritual of
veneration may be traced to pre-Buddhist solar
cults. The ground-plan of the railing, with the
gateways at the four points of the compass
describing the revolving claws of a swastika, is
no accident, but a purposeful incorporation of
one of the most ancient sun symbols. A reminiscence
of solar cults may certainly be discerned
in the prescribed ritual of circumambulation, in
which the worshipper, entering the precinct by
the eastern gateway, walked round the mound
in a clockwise direction, describing thereby the
course of the sun through the heavens.
This
would seem to bear out the theory maintained
by many scholars that the Buddha's mortal
career was adapted later as an allegory of solar
myths. The practical function of the railing or
vedika was to separate the sacred precinct from
the secular world. The decoration of the stupas
of the early period was limited almost entirely
to the sculpture of the railing and the gateways.
One of the principal stupas surviving from
Sunga times is the relic-mound at Bharhut in
north central India. Remnants of its railing and