Akira Shimada
Department of History, State University of New York at New Paltz, USA
Ancient Andhra region located in south-eastern Deccan saw vigorous Buddhist construction and artistic activity after ca. 200 BCE as indicated by numerous remains of stūpa-s along the Godavari and Krishna river valleys. Many of these stūpa-s were embellished by limestone sculpture that often includes narrative reliefs, such as jātaka-s and Buddha’s life events. In fact, along with Gandharan sculpture, Andhran Buddhist sculpture provides the largest set of early Indian Buddhist narratives. Moreover, unlike the Gandharan sculpture, the chronology of Andhran narrative sculpture is reasonably well established by the detailed stylistic and iconographical studies. Andhran sculpture may thus provide us a precious clue to reconstruct the development of Buddhist narrative tradition in eastern Deccan, if examined carefully.
To establish a foundation for a more comprehensive research on Andhran Buddhist narratives, this paper will give an overview on the development of narrative sculptures by focusing on two largest sets of Andhran narratives in the lower Krishna valley, i.e., Amaravati (ca. 150 BCE-250 CE) and Nagarjunakonda (ca. 200-300 CE). The paper would particularly like to address the following three issues: (1) when and how the lower Krishna valley increased different topics of Buddhist legends between Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda; (2) when and how lower Krishna valley developed a variety of narrative cycles, including a complete cycle of Buddha’s life from the birth to nirvāna; (3) how we may relate the narrative tradition of lower Krishna valley with that of other region, such as Gandhara.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))