Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi

Sanchi sits on a sandstone spur above the Betwa plain in what is now Madhya Pradesh, and its monuments span a longer period of continuous activity than almost any comparable site in the country. The origins are debated: the archaeological sequence on the spur is earlier than the brick stupa recorded in the texts, and the great Ashokan stupa was almost certainly constructed on ground that was already significant.

The complex as visitors encounter it is the work of at least three dynasties. Ashoka, in the third century BCE, established the stupa and the first monastic buildings. The Satavahana rulers of the Deccan, in the first century BCE and first century CE, added the second and third stupas and many of the later caves. Finally, the Gupta period in the fifth century CE saw the excavation of Cave 3, the great rock-cut temple with a flat ceiling carried on a single massive pillar, and the repair of the older structures.

What makes Sanchi exceptional is the carving. The stone enclosure rails of the Great Stupa carry narrative reliefs in which the Jataka tales and the life of the Buddha are told without a Buddha figure at all — he is represented by an empty throne, a footprint, a parasol or the Bodhi tree. The same convention runs through the toranas, free-standing gateways, whose three horizontal beams carry dense bands of narrative from the life of the Buddha and the Jatakas. Later periods added to these surfaces, so the monument is also a record of how the iconography of Buddhism changed between the second century BCE and the second century CE.