Early Buddhist Art of Bodh Gaya

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Early Buddhist Art of Bodh-Gaya is an exercise in hermeneutic reconstruction of the text and context of the first century BC railing sculptures from the site, where the Buddha had attained enlightenment in the sixth century BC and where the diamond throne of the Buddha survives as a remnant from Asokan Days in the third century BC. It investigates and corrects the subjective intellectual bias in a century and a half of writing on Bodh-Gaya, redirects attention from coins, inscriptions, motifs, patterns, teleological, religious or iconological theories to the style of objects; and uses the bodh-Gaya railing sculptures, together with sculptures from other sites, to explain the entire evolution of early Buddhist Art in North India from the second century to the first century BC, in the process, it recapitulates and rectifies the nineteenth century archaeology of Cunningham, translates and critically interprets, for the first time, several seminal analyses in French by twentieth century scholars like Coomaraswamy, Combaz, Hackin, Stern and Benisti; and retrieves from oblivion, the outstanding contribution of early Bodh-Gaya railing sculptures to the formation of the vocabulary of Indian Art.

About the Author

Dr Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty is Dirctor, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manava Sangrahalaya (National Museum of Mnakind), Bhopal, and is presently engaged in developing a postcolonial museum, dedicated to issues of human creativity, bounty and survival and To the conservation and revitalization of life enhancing elements of knowledge and skill in indigenous communities and traditions. His publications include: Art of India: Orchha (New Delhi 1984); Gwalior Fort: Art, Culture and History (New Delhi, 1984);The Art of India: Khajuraho (New Delhi, 1985);The Indian Family (Bhopal, 1994).

Abbreviations

List of Plates

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. THE ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE AND ICONOGRAPHY

2. HISTORIOGRAPHY

3. STYLISTIC COMPARISONS

4. CONCLUSION

   Bibliography

   Index