Bharhut Stupa

Around 100 B.C., a great stupa was made at Bharhut, in the eastern part of present-day Madhya Pradesh (in Satna District). Bharhut stupa was initially built by Asoka and was later improvised by the Sungas.

The railings of the stupa and its one surviving gate are at the Indian Museum in Kolkata. This is the earliest stupa railing to have survived.

The architectural significance

Unlike the imperial art of the Mauryas, the inscriptions on railings of Bharhut stupa show that the reliefs and figures were donated by lay people, monks and nuns. Thus, it is one of the earliest examples of Maurya popular art.

The railings contain numerous birth stories of the Buddha’s previous lives, or Jataka tales.

The Bharhut stupa represents the aniconic phase of Buddhist art. Buddha has been represented in the form of symbols.

The style is generally flat, with low bass relief, and all characters are depicted wearing the Indian dhoti, except for one foreigner, thought to be an Indo-Greek soldier, with Buddhist symbolism.

The Bharhut stupa railings have numerous images of the yakshas and yakshis, which have been part of India’s society from time immemorial. At Bharhut, we find the earliest images of the Yakshas and Yakshis which later become the part of later art. These embody the spirit of nature and serve to remind us of the divinity that underlies all that is around us. The Yakshas and Yakshis represent the protection of nature and its great fertility, which ensures the continuance of life.

The north gateway of the Vedika at Bharhut shows Kubera whom the Yaksha and Yakshis attend. We find the images of Yakhsi Chandra and Vrikshika, the one who is shown intertwined with a tree. One more Yakshi called AsokaDohada, the one who hold an Asoka Tree leave in her hand and also a child in her womb (two hearts) and intertwines with the tree like a creeper, representing the fertility. One of the sculptures is of Laksmi on the railing of the Bharhut, which is earliest image of this diety.

The carvings on the Bharhut railings are in low relief and not yet as deep as can be seen in later Indic art.

A pillar of the vedika has a depiction of a Greek warrior. He wears boots and a tunic and has short hair and a headband.

On another railing, there is a Nagaraja, the serpent king, who is in human form but has a serpent hood. Like yakshas and yakshis, Naga deities serve to keep us conscious of the power, the protection and the fertility of nature.

Queen Maya’s dream, preceding the birth of the Buddha, is also a major theme on the railing of the Bharhut “stupa”. In the early art of Buddhism, the figure of the Buddha was never represented. Instead, there were symbols of him, such as a seat, footprints, the Bodhi tree, the wheel and the “stupa”. The sculptural reliefs of the railings are a virtual library of early Buddhist iconographic motifs.