and some of the jatakastories. Nature, demons, and
mythical creatures are all portrayed with great imagi-
nation, utilizing a vast visual vocabulary culled from
indigenous sources, as well as adaptations of Western
composite creatures and plant life.
On the eastern Deccan, the broad central plateau of
India, the Buddhist center at Amaravat (Andhra
Pradesh, S ́atavahana period, second century C.E.) was
the site of a large stupa that was faced and surrounded
by elegantly carved white-green limestone slabs. The
stupas themselves are gone, but many of the railings
and facing slabs can be seen in Indian and Western
museums. Many of the slabs reproduce in section the
whole stupa with its intricate railings and gateways.
The narrative scenes are taken mainly from the life of
the Buddha, although the Buddha image is still not
shown. The style is naturalistic, as at Sañc, but uses
more layering of figures to give a greater sense of depth.
Figures are rounded, like those at Sañc, but the out-
lines are slightly elongated and nervous in their move-
ments. Remains of temples and monastic dwellings
have also been found at Amaravatand at the related
sites of Ghantas ́ala, Jaggayyapeta, and later at Nagar-
junakonda (third century C.E.).
Stupas and monastic centers were usually patron-
ized by guilds and by individuals, both lay devotees and
monks or nuns, not by royalty or wealthy merchants.
This public interest aspect of stupas is reflected in
everyday scenes from the Buddha’s life, usually de-
picted in the reliefs, rather than scenes of royal and
godly figures in palace halls. This patronage may also
have contributed to the prohibition against using
BUDDHA IMAGES: Lay Buddhists may have felt that you
should not represent in art a person who had entered
NIRVANA, a TATHAGATA(one who has gone), the name
most often used to refer to the Buddha in the texts.
Rock-cut architecture (first century B.C.E. to sec-
ond century C.E.)
Beginning in the first century B.C.E., rock-cut or CAVE
SANCTUARIES and monasteries carefully imitated
wooden structures of the day. In the centuries around
the beginning of the common era the rock-cut wor-
ship hall (caitya) and monastery (vihara) became es-
tablished forms in northern and central India. The
earliest site known is Bhaja(100 to 70 B.C.E., contem-
porary with Bharhut) in Maharashtra, where a large
caitya hall and many small monastic dwellings were ex-
cavated. Its imitation of wooden constructions includes
the use of actual wood beams in the hall’s barrel ceil-
ing; wooden architectural sculpture and balconies once
adorned the front. Other rock-cut sites, all found along
the high escarpment in Maharashtra, are Pitalkhora
(also 100–70 B.C.E.), Bedsa(early first century C.E.), and
Nasik and Kanheri (both about 125–130 C.E.).
The largest caitya hall is at Karl, Maharashtra,
carved out of a stone cliff in about 50 to 75 C.E.near
Bombay. It has a navelike form, 125-feet in length in-
cluding apse and colonnade, and has stone reliefs of
a palatial facade; a free-standing lion-topped pillar
marks the entrance. An enormous horseshoe-shaped
window with a wooden lattice filters light into the hall,
illuminating the monolithic stupa at the apse-end of
the hall. This window shape and lattice decoration
characterizes Indian facades to this day. An elaborately
sculpted veranda has high-relief elephants “support-
ing” the side walls and voluptuous couples on either
side of the main door. Figures ride animals on the in-
terior column capitals and the facade has multiple bal-
conies decorated with reliefs of smiling people. Overall,
Karlshows a sensuous environment equal to that cre-
ated on Sañc’s carved gateways in miniature, here on
a large scale carved right out of the living rock.The Buddha image: Mathuraand Gandhara
(Kushan period, first to third centuries C.E.)
The beginnings of figural sculpture of the Buddha in
India is a controversial and intriguing study in the
motives for image-making, as well as the develop-
ment of both indigenous and adapted styles. Two
sites—Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India,
and the Gandhara region in present-day Pakistan—
sponsored parallel versions of Buddha images and
narrative reliefs at least as early as the first century
C.E. (some fragments may be from the first century
B.C.E.). The Kushan rulers, under whom this new
trend in Buddhist imagery arose, came from Central
Asia and dominated the area from Bactria to the
Gangetic plain. Buddhism was spreading actively
along the Silk Road through Central Asia at this time,
making Gandhara a fertile site for trade in artworks
in service of the faith. Mathura, the Kushan southern
capital, had long been an artistic center, and artists
there also made images for the monastic centers that
had spread throughout northern India.
The Mathuraimages follow indigenous forms with
geometric, full volumes and attributes signifying a spir-
itual being (called laksana). The solid power of the
Mathurabuddhas follow the prototype of the village
yaksas found so frequently around stupas—natureINDIA, BUDDHISTART IN