Stupas: why, how and their fate

Certain places were sacred from early times. Sites with special trees, rocks or striking natural beauty, often with small shrines, were called chaityas. Places connected with the Buddha's life became sacred too: Lumbini (birth), Bodh Gaya (enlightenment), Sarnath (first sermon) and Kusinagara (death).

Stupas were mounds that held relics of the Buddha, such as his bodily remains or objects he used, or of other revered people. The relics made the whole mound sacred. According to the Ashokavadana, Asoka distributed the Buddha's relics to every important town and ordered stupas built over them. By the second century BCE, stupas stood at Bharhut, Sanchi and Sarnath.

Who paid for them? Inscriptions on railings and pillars record donations by kings, guilds (the ivory workers of Vidisha paid for part of a gateway at Sanchi), and hundreds of ordinary men and women, as well as monks and nuns.

Structure: a semicircular mound of earth, the anda; on top, a balcony-like structure, the harmika (the abode of the gods); from it, a mast called the yashti, often topped by a chhatri (umbrella). Around it, a railing separated the sacred space; at Sanchi, four ornate gateways stood at the four cardinal points. Devotees walked around the stupa clockwise, keeping it on their right.

Their fate: at Amaravati, colonial officials carried off sculpted slabs (some became the 'Elliot marbles'), and the stupa is now just a mound. Sanchi survived. H. H. Cole argued that it was suicidal to let originals be removed, and urged that they be preserved in situ (where they were found).