Between the second and sixth centuries ce, monastic seclusion was reinforced by the sangha shifting the ritual focus from stupas within apsidal chaityas to Buddha images within viharas. At the same time, some portions of the sangha began practicing Mahayana Buddhism. These changes can best be explained through the combined insights of materiality and semiotics (Fogelin 2012). From a material practice perspective, the abandonment of stupas within chaityas and the carving of images within viharas materialized monastic isolation. The placement of Buddha images within viharas also materialized a new relationship between the sangha and the foci of their rituals. Buddha images were a return to the iconic, emotionally immediate, worship of the Buddha lost after centuries of manipulation to the form of monastic stupas. Where previously monastic stupas had been constructed in ways that the sangha felt would assert their authority over the laity and speed the flow of donations, Buddha images were now intended to be meaningful only for the sangha themselves (Fogelin 2008c). Without the need to assert authority over the laity, the sangha was free to refashion the foci of the their rituals in ways that concorded with their new, secluded lifestyle. In this light, the creation of Buddha images and the development of Mahayana Buddhism were part of the construction of a new monastic identity. Materiality, however, is somewhat mute on what the new images signified to those who erected them. In contrast, a semiotic perspective can explain why monastic stupas in apsidal chaityas were no longer meaningful to the Buddhist sangha, and why Buddha images and Mahayana Buddhism were more satisfying in the context of developing monastic isolation in the beginning of the first millennium GE.
In the second through sixth centuries GE, the sangha lived in a world created by their monastic ancestors. The primary focus of their ritual actions—stupas—had, through physical manipulation of their predecessors, become a symbol of Buddhism. Monastic stupas lacked the emotional immediacy of the pilgrimage stupas and relics that continued to receive the devotion of the laity. Successive generations of the sangha, materializing their power and authority in the stupas of apsidal chaityas, had created symbols that emphasized thirdness and promoted an increasingly intellectual and abstract relationship between the sangha and Buddhism’s founder. The signs of monastic Buddhism had become, by semiotic definition, conventional.
Between the second and sixth centuries GE, the sangha progressively created a more satisfying link between themselves and the Buddha through the creation of Buddha images and the adoption of Mahayana Buddhism. In semiotic terms, Buddha images were icons of the Buddha and symbols of Buddhism. Unlike the purely symbolic monastic stupas they replaced, Buddha images were multivalent signs. While Buddha images continued to symbolically signify Buddhism in an abstract sense (thirdness), their iconicity simultaneously created a sense of firstness and emotional immediacy for the members of the sangha who viewed them. In the late fifth century GE, Buddha images helped signify that the Buddha was immediate and active in the emotional lives of the sangha. As such, the theology of Mahayana Buddhism and the construction of Buddha images can be understood as a revitalization movement—defined here as a conscious effort to construct a more satisfying culture (Wallace 1956:215). Freed from dependence on the laity, the sangha refashioned their monasteries to both signify and create this new material and spiritual reality.
Nothing in this analysis should be taken to suggest that Mahayana Buddhism and Buddha images necessarily arose directly from the actions of earlier monks. Rather, the relationship between monastic seclusions, Buddha images, Mahayana Buddhism, and the manipulations of stupas by previous generations of monks are best understood using Weber’s concept of “elective affinity” (see Chapter 2). That is, many other potentialities were possible. Just as earlier monks had agency when attenuating stupas, later monks had agency when creating Mahayana Buddhism and
Buddha images. For example, in the second through sixth centuries CE the sangha could have chosen to abandon their monasteries and rejoin lay Buddhists in their devotions at the pilgrimage centers. In fact, at Sanchi, Sarnath, and numerous other pilgrimage centers in the Gangetic Plain, it appears that the sangha did just that—establishing or renovating monasteries near iconic stupas marking the key points in the Buddha’s life. Alternatively, the sangha could have, but did not, hollowed out their stupas and placed relics within them. Many other actions were possible as well. By saying that physical manipulations of stupas created the preconditions that help explain the origin of Mahayana Buddhism and Buddha images, I am not arguing that these manipulations caused, in any direct way, Buddha images. The Buddhist sangha in the second through sixth centuries CE had their own reasons for sculpting Buddha images and refashioning Buddhist theology in the particular ways they did. The important point here is that we cannot let semiotic categories over-determine our analyses.
Following the perspectives of practice theory and materiality, people are not automatons enacting structural rules. People are creative actors engaging with and altering the material world in which they find themselves for specific purposes. But it would be mistake to ignore the weight of signs inherited from the past. Signs have real meaning and real impact on the people who use and experience them. Rather than relying on a single perspective, archaeologists should combine the insights of materiality and semiotics in their research. Here I have employed materiality and semiotics to examine the metamorphosis of Buddhist ritual foci from 500 BCE through 500 CE, from ancestral earthen stupas to Buddha images carved in the viharas of the Western Ghats (see Figure 5.8). Individually, each step in the metamorphosis seems explicable from the perspective of materiality alone. Early Buddhists enlarged earthen stupas and altered the medium to stone, brick, and stucco in order to assert the power and importance of the relics interred within. Later, the sangha constructed attenuated and implied mass stupas to establish their authority over the laity. Later still, the sangha abandoned their stupas in apsidal chaityas in favor of images within viharas in order to foster monastic seclusion. While the motivations of the actors at each stage are interesting and important, by themselves they do not fully account for the long-term metamorphosis of Buddhist ritual foci. Attenuated stupas are inexplicable without the knowledge that they were icons of ancestral stupas. The emotional immediacy of Buddha images is only interesting in relation to the intellectual detachment of the stupas that immediately preceded them. Without semiotic theory, the changes in significance due to the specific manipulations of stupas and the
Icon (relic) of the Buddha Index (anda) of the relic
Pilgrimage Stupa
Creation of images by ancient Buddhists would be difficult to ascertain. People are actors and interpretants, objects are of the world and of the mind, and signs have real impacts on people’s actions. A full accounting of archaeological pasts must employ multiple theories that together can account for the dialectic between signs inherited from the past and the actions of agents that alter those signs for the future. Archaeologists must also place these accounts within the specific histories of the people they study—in the case of the Buddhist sangha between the second and sixth centuries CE, within a context of the invention of a new, ascetic ideal.
World History
