Pilgrimage Centers

The material remains of Indian Buddhism are found, with very few exceptions, in two general types of sites—pilgrimage centers and monasteries. From the outset, it should be noted that many pilgrimage centers contained monasteries, and many monasteries became the foci of pilgrimage. Further, the distinctiveness of pilgrimage centers and monasteries varied significantly in different periods of Indian history and even regionally during individual periods. These temporal and geographic trends are an important part of the archaeological history I present in this book.

The simple division between pilgrimage centers and monasteries presented here is only intended to facilitate an initial understanding of the range of archaeological evidence available for the study of ancient Indian Buddhism.

The earliest Buddhist pilgrimage sites are presumed to have been built in the Gangetic Plain in the centuries after the Buddha’s death. The four most important pilgrimage sites mark the key locations in the biography of the Buddha—his birth at Lumbini, his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, his first sermon at Sarnath, and his death (and release from the cycle of rebirth) at Kushinagar. After the rediscovery and excavation of these sites in the nineteenth century, these four sites have become the focus of pilgrimage by Buddhists from around the world. While it is presumed that all mark genuine locations of the events they commemorate, Coningham (2001) has convincingly argued that, with the possible exception of Lumbini, none has Buddhist archaeological materials dating earlier than the third century BCE, two centuries after the Buddha’s death. This does not mean that Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagar were not pilgrimage centers prior to the third century BCE, only that there is no archaeological evidence for it. As for Lumbini, as will be discussed in Chapter 3, recent excavations led by Coningham and Acharya have revealed a possible early Buddhist temple dating to the sixth century BCE (Coningham et al. 2013).

The Sri Lankan Mahaparinibbana-sutta (Davids and Davids [1910] 2007) and other Buddhist textual sources record that after the Buddha’s death, his disciples cremated his body and gave his ashes to eight kings to place in large mounds of earth erected near crossroads. These earthen mounds were called stupas, and burial in stupas was the typical manner for interring the remains of important individuals of many religions at the time (Shimada and Hawkes 2009). Over the subsequent centuries, stupas became the principal foci of Buddhist ritual (see Figure 1.1), though Buddhists also worshiped at trees and other objects in some instances (e. g., the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya). Textual sources record that in the third century BCE the Mauryan King Ashoka disinterred and redistributed relics from seven of the eight prototypical stupas, creating thousands of more elaborate stupas made of brick, stone, and stucco. Relying on these accounts, archaeologists have long sought to identify the original eight stupas in which the Buddha’s remains were interred, particularly the fabled eighth intact stupa. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, none of the alleged ancestral stupas identified by archaeologists is reliable, since none can be clearly dated to the times of the Buddha. What can be said, however, is that after the third century BCE, stupas became the primary focus

Figure 1.1: Buddhist pilgrimage center at Sanchi (c. third century BCE-thirteenth century ce)

Courtesy of the Digital South Asia Library and American Institute of Indian Studies (Accession No. 27).

Of Buddhist pilgrimage in India, with large pilgrimage centers built surrounding them (Shimada and Hawkes 2009).

Mitra (1971:21-22) has identified four broad types of stupas in India. The first were those that contained the cremated remains of either the Buddha or one of his principal disciples. The second contained the Buddha’s material possessions (e. g., begging bowl or robes). The third type of stupa marked the location of key moments in the Buddha’s biography (birth, first sermon, death, etc.). Finally, surrounding many primary stupas (of the above three types) were numerous votive stupas—small stupas containing the cremated remains of devotees. Votive stupas allowed devotees to engage in perpetual worship of the Buddha, even after death (Schopen 1997:ch. 7). While valuable, Mitra’s division of stupas into four distinct categories is also problematic. In practice, individual stupas often blended elements of different categories. Stupas erected on locations associated with the Buddha’s life often contained relics (e. g., Sarnath; Cunningham [1854] 1997). The stupas of key disciples were sometimes erected near Buddha stupas, with the disciples’ stupas serving simultaneously as votive stupas to the Buddha and as the focus of worship themselves. Finally, it must be noted that stupas were not always the central focus of pilgrimage.

At Bodh Gaya, ritual focused on the Bodhi tree, a descendant of the tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment. At Lumbini, pilgrims focused their attention on the location where the Buddha was born, today located inside the Maya Devi Temple. While less common than pilgrimage sites centered on stupas, some sites outside the Gangetic Plain were also constructed around trees, rocks, or other ritual foci. For example, a descendant of the Bodhi tree from Bodh Gaya is one, of several, foci of pilgrimage to Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka.

Whether trees, rocks, or stupas, the primary form of ritual at Buddhist pilgrimage centers consisted of individuals walking around (circumambulating) the foci, accumulating merit and ultimately speeding their path to nirvana. While circumambulatory paths (pradakshina) were often large enough to hold many worshipers simultaneously, circumambula-tion was ultimately an act of worship between an individual and the Buddha—often represented by the Buddha’s relics contained within the stupa. As such, circumambulation was one of the individualizing elements of early Buddhism (Fogelin 2003). Over time, Buddhists began to alter the architectural layout of ritual complexes to allow both individual and group worship of stupas. Group ritual consisted of collective worship by multiple people in courtyards surrounding the stupas and pradakshina (circumambulatory paths).

A pilgrimage center, almost by definition, required the presence of a stupa or similar ritual foci. But two other types of structures were also commonly built at pilgrimage centers. The first were chaityas, apsidal halls with a stupa placed at one end (see Figure 1.2). Chaityas served as subsidiary shrines to the central ritual foci. The second were buildings (usually square) with small rooms arrayed around a central courtyard (see Figure 1.2). These were Buddhist monasteries, or viharas. As will be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, it is likely viharas were later additions to pilgrimage centers, with most constructed in the early to mid-first millennium CE. Prior to this, viharas, for the most part, were restricted to Buddhist monasteries.