The ancient and medieval architecture of India: a study of Indo-Aryan civilisation

CHAPTER

IV

THE

STUPA AND ITS SYMBOLISM

The previous chapters will enable the

reader to put in its

properplaceinIndian architectural history,and

in the life of

ancient India,the interesting structurewhich I

willnowpro-

ceed to discuss, the sttlpa orfuneral monument,

which Fer-

gusson took for his starting-point. The sttipa

itself, being

originally only a tomb or cenotaph, never came

within the

enclosureofanIndianvillageexceptas asymbol; itbelonged

to the cemetery or cremation-ground outside. It was only

when it had been consecrated as a religious symbol, like so

manyother structural elements in Indianbuilding, thatitbe-

came, like the village shrine,associated with life as well as

deathand wasused tomarkplaces madesacredby theevents

in the life of the saintwhom it commemorated,and also as

an ideograph in a hieratic languageemployed decorativelyin

Buddhist-Hindu art in the same way as Arabic and other

scriptwas

afterwards

usedbyMuhammadancraftsmen.

The sttlpa

did

not originatewith

Buddhism, norwas it

solely associated with

that

aspect of Indo-Aryan religious

thought, though the effect of
Asoka's ardent propaganda of

thecultof Sikiya MunimadetheBuddhiststdpa

much more

common than any other. The
Jains,

and probably

all other

sectsin Asoka'stime, had theirsttipas. The

formerplace the

earliest of the
24

Tirthankaras, or

saints,commemorated by

their sttipas,as far back as theVedic Rishis
; and doubtless

the oldest stdpas were not symbols
of

a

religious cult, but

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