The first scene of the conversion of Kasyapa (ancient sage) of Uruvilva on the middle of the inner side of the left-hand pillar of the East gateway at Sanchi shows another shrine of this type. This is the Shrine of the Black Snake which the Buddha eventually caught in his begging-bowl. Here the dome is broken by eight windows and is surrounded by a balcony railing.
The famous shrine which Ashoka built around the bodhi tree appears at Bharhut, Sanchi, Mathura, and Amaravati. At Bharhut it is sculptured on the Prasenajit pillar and seems to consist of a barrel-roofed colonnade, circular in plan entirely surrounding the tree. The upper story is provided with many windows and a balcony railing. At Sanchi this same building is accurately reproduced on the front of the left pillar, and again on the outside of the lower architrave, of the East gateway, where it is the centre of a huge host of pilgrims. At Mathura it also appears on an architrave of Kushan date and again in a slightly amplified form at Amaravati. Here other buildings have arisen around it and to one side is a gateway (torana). These gateways were apparently used everywhere, for secular purposes as well as ecclesiastical, for on the middle architrave of the East gateway at Sanchi, one appears as the entrance to a town through which a procession is passing beneath crowded windows and balconies.
A survey of such scenes where buildings of two and three stories abound accords with the colourful descriptions of the splendours of such towns of ancient India as Vaisali or Pataliputra. Buildings of seven stories in height are even spoken of (Satta, Bhumaka, Pasadd). Among the most famous of these piles was the Kutagara-Vihara at Vaisali, which Buddhaghosa describes as a storied building raised on pillars with a pinnacle, and like the chariot of the gods.
Civil architecture is described in the Jatakas on almost as lavish a scale. The large houses had wide gateways leading into an inner courtyard with rooms opening into it on ground level. There were granaries and store-rooms and a treasury, but the flat roof, as at all times in the East, played a great part in the life of the house, at least during the day, being probably roofed-in to form an open-sided, airy pavilion.
Plaster (chunam) was used everywhere to adorn these buildings, and as a base for painting. Yaksha figures were painted as door-guardians and certain decorative motives are also mentioned: wreath-work, five-ribbon work, dragon’s teeth work, and creeper-work.
As has been said, nothing of these splendours has come down to us in any of the various sites that have been excavated. It is obvious, however, that the greater part of these structures was of wood and therefore perishable, as, indeed, layers of ashes testify in many places. It is noticeable that the pillars of the upper stories of the buildings depicted on the bas-reliefs are octagonal, usually without capital or base. The pillars on the ground floor are octagonal also but have heavy bells surmounted by animal capitals or brackets, which suggests that the lower pillars were possibly of stone. On the right jamb of the East gateway at Sanchi are represented six superimposed stories, said by Grünwedel to represent the six deva-lokas. The pillars of these structures are grouped in pairs, the lowest of each having bell-capitals, the upper being plain and leading up to the barrel-roof. There is a considerable difference between the proportions of the upper and lower pillars, which again suggests a difference in material.
Although monastic institutions in India were not confined to the Buddhists, the Buddhist Sangha (community) attained a height of power and a detail of organization to which the Jain and Brahmanical communities never aspired; and in consequence, the buildings dedicated to the use of the Order were frequently designed on a scale of the utmost magnificence. The central and all important building of the early monasteries seems to have been the Sabha or hall of meeting of the community. Gateways, store-houses, kitchens, and well-houses are mentioned, but the actual cells of the monks were apparently a group of separate buildings. These, it seems, were built by the brethren themselves, among whom were many skilled architects. In the Jatakas it is said, however, that only the senior brethren had their own chambers, while the juniors slept in the hall. Later the Buddha ordained that novices should be lodged with their supervisors for three days and then sent to their own place. The forest-dweller’s leafy hut is often portrayed in the early sculpture and many of the lesser dwellings of the monastery were probably of this type. The meeting hall or service hall must have been a common type of building in ancient India, for the Buddhist Sangha was by no means an innovation and can be directly compared to the hundred and one political and social corporations of the time. Every village, profession, and craft was organised into guilds which had their appointed places of meeting.
The mote hall of the Licchavis (Santhagara) must have been a building of the same kind as the Assembly-hall of the Buddhists.
Before the period of the rock-cut halls and cells like those at Bhaja and of later Bedsa, in Gandhara (area around Peshawar, in the east of the Khyber Pass) and in medieval India generally, the monasteries took a quadrangular form, the cells being built so that they faced inwards on the four sides of a courtyard.
When such a quadrangle became multiple, through the addition of chapels, stupas, refectories, halls, churches, storehouses, and other buildings, the greater monasteries covered an enormous area, and offered to the architect, sculptor, and painter endless opportunities for the display of art in every form. Although no very early monastery has survived in a condition at all complete, the ground-plans of many such establishments have been clearly traced, and in Gandhara considerable remains of superstructures crowded with statuary have been disclosed. Recorded descriptions and extant remains amply attest the splendour of the more important monasteries, each of which was a centre of secular as well as of religious education, and also a school of art in which men were trained in all the crafts needed for the adornment of the holy places.
Dhamekh Stupa. This stupa is said to mark the spot where Buddha gave his first sermons to his five disciples after attaining enlightenment. The narrative sculptures show different events from Buddha’s life, 249 B. C. E./50 °C. E., Maurya dynasty (Ashoka)/late Gupta period.
Solid cylinder of bricks and stone, stupa: diameter: 28 m, height 43.6 m. Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh.
The Jetavanaramaya stupa, located in the ruins of Jetavana Monastery, 3rd-4th century C. E., Anuradhapura period. One of the largest brick structures in the world (93.3 million baked bricks), height: 122 m, volume: 233,000 m3. Anuradhapura.
Symbols of the Buddha’s first sermon, with centred triple wheel, aniconic representation of the historic Buddha, 2nd century B. C. E., Kushan period, Ancient Gandhara (modern Pakistan/Afghanistan). Grey schist, 23.2 × 19.7 × 4.4 cm. Private collection.
Something of this great school of art is preserved for us in the great rock-cut halls and dwelling-caves of Western India. Here, at Bhaja, Kondane, Pitalkhora, Bedsa, Ajanta, Nasik, Karli, and Kanheri, have been hewn out of the very heart of the rock full-scale reproductions of the ancient assembly-halls in all the detail of their wooden construction. In general plan they correspond with the barrel-roofed buildings of the early sculpture. They are apsidal with side aisles on either hand and are lit by the great horseshoe window at one end. A survey of this series of caves lays bare a stylistic advance from purely wooden imitation to definitely lithic forms. At Bhaja the plain octagonal pillars rake inwards considerably; the screen that closed the lower part of the great window was actually of timber mortised into the rock as are the carefully inset roof beams. There is no decoration except bands of railing-pattern and tiers of miniature ‘chatty a windows’, derived from the piled-up stories of the wooden originals. These details apply to the caves at Kondane, Pitalkhora and to the earliest at Ajanta (Cave X). Later the wooden screen is reproduced in stone and bell-capitals and bases, and tiered-up abaci