Stupa

• 1. Introduction

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  A stupa is a domed hemispherical structure found across the Buddhist world, and according to tradition, the very first person to explain its design was the Buddha himself. When asked what a stupa was, he folded his robe on the ground, placed his begging bowl upside down on it, and set his staff above that. Three objects, one gesture. That simple demonstration mapped out an architectural form that would be built tens of thousands of times across Asia over the following two and a half millennia. What are these structures actually holding inside? Why does walking around one matter as much as entering a cathedral? And how did a solid dome in the Ganges plains eventually become a soaring pagoda tower in China and Japan?

• 2. Before Buddhism

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  Long before the first Buddhist monk was buried, people in South Asia were already raising mounds over the dead. Archaeologists working at Dholavira, a site linked to the Indus Valley Civilization, have excavated structures called Tumulus-1 and Tumulus-2. Each consists of a deep rock-cut chamber surrounded by a massive circular mud-brick structure built in two tiers, filled in and topped with earth to form a domed shape. Tumulus-1 even carries a layer of pinkish-white clay plaster, 10 millimetres thick, over its brick masonry. These hemispherical monuments predate Buddhism by centuries, and scholars read them as likely inspirations for later stupas. The connection runs deeper than shape. Early Buddhist stupas have frequently been found near much older megalithic burial sites, and at some locations, broken pottery from the Indus era was incorporated directly into later Buddhist burials. Some authors have traced similar mound-building traditions all the way to the Mediterranean, pointing to the tomb of Midas in Phrygia from the 8th century BCE, the tomb of Alyattes in Lydia from the 6th century BCE, and the tombs of Amrit in Phoenicia from the 5th century BCE. The stupa, in other words, arrived in history already ancient.

• 3. Relics and Rituals

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  After the Buddha's parinirvana, his remains were cremated and the ashes divided between eight mounds, with two further mounds built to house the urn and the embers. Lars Fogelin has identified the Relic Stupa of Vaishali as the earliest archaeologically known stupa. The Buddha had left specific instructions for how people should approach these structures: "And whoever lays wreaths or puts sweet perfumes and colours there with a devout heart, will reap benefits for a long time." That instruction eventually shaped the sculptural programs carved onto later stupas, where stone reliefs of flower garlands became standard decoration. Walking around a stupa in a clockwise direction, known as pradakhshina, became one of the oldest continuous ritual practices in Buddhism. Every stupa has a pradakhshina path. Large ones have walkways on top of the base as well as at ground level, and in many cases the paths are enclosed by vedika railings, often heavily decorated, especially at the four torana gateways. The relics distributed to those first eight sites were eventually multiplied on a vast scale. Emperor Ashoka, who ruled from 273 to 232 BCE, reportedly recovered the relics from the earlier stupas and then erected 84,000 new ones to scatter them across his realm.

• 4. Ashoka and Decoration

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  Ashoka left his mark in more ways than sheer numbers. The first known written use of the word "stupa" appears on the Nigali Sagar pillar, an inscribed dedication by Ashoka, where it is spelled in Pali in the Brahmi script as thube. He also established his famous pillars throughout his realm, generally placing them beside Buddhist stupas. Many of the most celebrated stupas in India, including Sanchi and Kesariya, are thought to date originally from his reign. Sculptural decoration arrived at Sanchi Stupa No. 2 around 125 BCE, making it the first known attempt at embellishing a stupa with relief carvings. From there the program expanded rapidly. Bharhut followed around 115 BCE, Bodh Gaya around 60 BCE, Mathura between 125 and 60 BCE, and Amaravati between the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. In the northwest, in the region of Gandhara, the Butkara Stupa was given Hellenistic decorative elements from the 2nd century BCE onward. The instruction the Buddha gave about offering wreaths and perfumes had, over several centuries, transformed into some of the most intricate carved stone programs produced anywhere in the ancient world.

• 5. Gandhara and the Pagoda

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  Gandhara, the ancient region that spans parts of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, was where the stupa underwent its most consequential architectural transformation. Because Buddhism spread to Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan through this corridor, design changes made there echoed across an enormous geographical range. The Dharmarajika Stupa, probably dating to the 3rd century BCE, was still close to the original Indian form, a near-hemispherical dome sitting almost directly on the ground. Over the following centuries the form stretched upward through several distinct stages. The Saidu Sharif Stupa, dated to the 1st century CE, was pillared and raised on a square platform with stairs. The Loriyan Tangai stupa of the 2nd century CE became the classic Gandharan form, elongated and covered in narrative reliefs. Then came the cruciform Bhamala Stupa of the 4th century CE with stairways in all four cardinal directions. Finally, the second Kanishka Stupa, from the 4th to 5th century CE, represented the fully towering design. That tower form is now thought to be the direct precursor of the Chinese pagoda. The Asian words for pagoda, ta in Chinese, t'ap in Korean, thap in Vietnamese, and to in Japanese, are all believed to derive from thupa, the Pali word for stupa. The Songyue Pagoda, built in China in 523 CE, stands as an early descendant of this lineage.

• 6. Across Asia

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  Sri Lanka received stupa architecture after Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura converted to Buddhism, with the Thuparamaya built as the first. The ancient city of Anuradhapura went on to produce some of the tallest and best-preserved stupas in the world, including the Ruwanwelisaya. In Thailand, Phra Pathommachedi in Nakhon Pathom rises to 120.45 metres, making it the second tallest surviving stupa in the world. The most elaborate example is the 8th-century Borobudur monument in Java, Indonesia, which UNESCO has acknowledged as the largest Buddhist monument in the world. Its upper terraces carry rows of bell-shaped stupas containing Buddha images that symbolize Arupajhana, the sphere of formlessness. The main stupa at the summit is deliberately left empty, as a symbol of complete enlightenment. In Tibet the stupa became the chorten, and eight distinct shapes of chorten exist in Tibetan Buddhism, each connected to a major event in the Buddha's life. Some scholars have proposed that the Japanese torii gate derives from the torana gateways found at Sanchi, which dates from the 3rd century BCE to the 11th century CE, suggesting that even a form as familiar as a Japanese shrine entrance may carry the structural memory of an ancient Indian stupa.

• 7. What a Stupa Holds

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  Every stupa contains what is called a treasury, and the treasury is never empty. Small clay votive offerings called tsatsas, a Tibetan term, fill most of the interior space. The creation of each tsatsa is itself a ceremony: mantras written on paper are rolled into thin cylinders and placed inside tiny clay stupa forms. One layer of tsatsas is laid, the gaps between them are filled with dry sand, and then another layer is placed on top. The process continues until the entire space is packed full. The Kalachakra stupa in southern Spain required approximately 14,000 tsatsas to fill its treasury. Jewellery and other objects are also placed inside; the tradition holds that symbolic value matters more than market price. At the centre of every stupa stands what is called the Tree of Life, a wooden pole covered with gems and thousands of mantras. It is positioned during a ceremony in which participants hold coloured ribbons attached to the pole. The building of a stupa is considered to generate positive karmic imprints, with tradition promising fortunate rebirths, a long life, and eventually the ability to reach enlightenment. Destroying a stupa carries the opposite weight, described as an act comparable to murder, generating what the tradition calls massive negative karmic imprints. The five types of stupa, classified by function, include relic stupas, object stupas, commemorative stupas, symbolic stupas, and votive stupas. A ninth type, the Kalachakra stupa, stands apart from all the others: its symbolism is tied not to events in the Buddha's life but to the Kalachakra Tantra, built specifically to protect against negative energies.

• 8. Europe and Today

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  The Benalmadena Stupa in southern Spain is the tallest stupa in Europe, standing 33 metres high. It was inaugurated on the 5th of October 2003, and it was the final project completed by Buddhist master Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche, who died that same year. Rinpoche had built his first stupa at Karma Guen near Malaga in 1994 as a symbol of peace and prosperity for Spain, and went on to build 16 more stupas across Europe before his death. A stupa based on the bell-shaped forms at Borobudur stands at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery near Hemel Hempstead in the United Kingdom. Another was built at the Kalachakra Kalapa Centre in southwest Styria, Austria, between 2000 and 2002. The spread of stupas into Europe repeats a pattern visible in every direction from South Asia. The Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh remains the most famous and best-preserved early stupa in India, and the earliest archaeological evidence for Buddhist stupas dates to the late 4th century BCE. From that origin point the form travelled as far as Indonesia, Japan, and now the Spanish coast, shaped each time by local materials, local beliefs, and a persistent core: a dome, a relic, a path to walk around it.