Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor (13 page)

The brick and stone monument at Sarnath as drawn by Shaikh Abdullah for Colin Mackenzie in January 1814. Described as the ‘Samaudh [cenotaph] of Rajah Booth-Sain’, it is better known today as the Dharmekh stupa. (APAC, British Library)

When Colin Mackenzie next returned to Madras it was as the EICo’s first Surveyor General and with the rank of a full colonel. He now had the authority and the resources to do more or less as he pleased and in March 1816 he returned to the mound at Amaravati with an eleven-strong team of draughtsmen and surveyors. Mackenzie still believed it to be an early Jain monument, but his travels had now alerted him to the possibility that he might be wrong. To his dismay, he found the site all but gutted, its entire central core dug out to make a hundred-foot-square ‘tank’ or reservoir. In the process, three-
quarters of its decorated stone surround had gone, leaving only one segment untouched. Of the sculptured slabs that he had seen being uncovered in 1797, some had been used to construct a flight of steps at a nearby tank, others as building material at three temple structures and some mosques: ‘In short,’ Mackenzie complained, ‘these valuable stones of antiquity have been used in various buildings both public and private; those in particular applied to Mussulman mosques have first been carefully divested of every carving by rubbing them on harder stones.’
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From what little remained Mackenzie was able to make out that the structure must originally have resembled the cenotaph he had seen at Sarnath – but on a far grander scale, and with the addition of an encircling processional pathway with an inner and an outer stone railing. From the remaining section of this railing he and his men extracted more than a hundred exquisitely carved stone slabs and pillars, many portraying complex scenes from history or mythical scenes involving not only kings and queens but also the worship of a quite remarkable range of objects: trees, thrones, parasols, cartwheels, pairs of footprints, deities seated under the protection of cobras and, above all, great dome-like structures similar to the edifice Mackenzie had seen at Sarnath and which appeared to be modelled on the Amaravati mound itself as it might have appeared in its heyday.

Fortunately for posterity, Mackenzie’s draughtsmen made some excellent drawings (now preserved in the British Library in one album) before they moved on, while Mackenzie himself arranged for some eighty-two slabs and pillars to be moved down to Masulipatam for shipment on to Calcutta. Seven reached the Asiatic Society’s museum, many of the remainder being commandeered by the Assistant Collector of Masulipatam to decorate a curious structure in the town square that became known as ‘Mr Robertson’s Mount’. By the time the next antiquarian visited Amaravati, much of what remained had been ‘carried away and burnt into lime’.
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One of some ninety drawings of the Amaravati sculptures made by Murugesa Moodaliar in Madras in 1853. It shows three objects of worship: a stupa (top), a
Dharmachakra
, or ‘Wheel of the Moral Law’ (middle), and the Bodhi tree with the
Vajrasana
, or ‘Diamond Throne’, at its base. (APAC, British Library)

It was left to future generations to establish the full significance of Amaravati, perhaps the finest Buddhist monument ever erected in India. Mackenzie and his contemporaries had no idea what to
make of the iconography shown on its magnificent sculptures. They also failed to note that many of the earliest of the decorated slabs had been recycled, turned over and new scenes carved on their backs, so that the earlier scenes were hidden from view.

One of these early slabs is now in the Musée Guimet in Paris (see below). Although badly damaged and incomplete, enough survives to show a king flanked by two lesser male figures who face him with their hands pressed together in the
anjali mudra
, the ‘gesture of reverence’. The king – who quite clearly has something of a beer-belly hanging over his waist-cloth – has assumed a striking pose, with his right hand raised and his left clenched by his breast. A multi-spoked cartwheel is displayed behind him on the top of a pillar, together with a second, far taller pillar broken at the top but closely resembling Firoz Shah’s Lat and other such columns. A saddled but riderless horse stands at the king’s feet. On one side part of a shrine-like structure and part of the figure of a buxom woman grasping the branch of a tree have survived. The faces of all three male figures appear to have been deliberately defaced.

The defaced
Chakravartin
bas-relief, showing a ‘Wheel-turning Monarch’ bestowing universal good government based on the Dharma. (Musée Guimet, Paris)

A simpler version of this curious scene is shown in a wash drawing by a local draftsman, Murugesa Moodaliar. In the upper panel, a king is shown supported by two male figures on his left and two female figures on his right, with an elephant and a horse in attendance. The king has his right hand raised and his left fist clenched, just as in the first carving. Here, too, his face has been defaced. The acute observer will note other similarities. In the lower panel a king is seated on a throne with a queen below him, with an umbrella bearer in attendance (the parasol denotes royalty). What we should now call the
Dharmachakra
, or ‘Wheel of the Moral Law’, is displayed behind him and at his feet two monks present a begging bowl which he has filled. Again, an elephant and a horse are in attendance. Clearly, there is a link between the upper and lower panels.

The importance of these particular slabs as historical documents only began to be realised after a much later round of excavations at Amaravati and the surrounding region, carried out by the professional archaeologist James Burgess in the early 1880s. It was he who first noted that a number of the remaining stone slabs had been carved on both sides and that the structure itself had suffered ‘some violent destruction’ at an early stage, probably in the second century
BCE
when the Satavahana dynasty was in the process of moving in to fill the vacuum left by the Mauryas. The monument had then been restored and a surrounding colonnade with four gates added, only to be further enlarged some centuries later when the nearby city of Dhanyakataka had become the capital of the Satavahana rulers of Andra.

Two panels from the Great Stupa at Amaravati, drawn by Murugesa Moodaliar in Madras in 1853. The original bas-relief is in the Chennai Museum. (APAC, British Library)

Disappointed by what he had found at Amaravati, Burgess moved on to survey the extensive ruins found on both banks of the Krishna River upstream of Amaravati. Many turned out to be Buddhist monastic sites which, in Burgess’s opinion, had suffered the same fate as the Amaravati stupa. One Buddhist monument at Jaggayyapeta, some thirty miles upstream of Amaravati, was less damaged than the rest. Known locally as the ‘Hill of Wealth’, it proved to be a smaller version of the Amaravati structure. Its four gateways, surrounding colonnade and most of its slabs had gone, but a number of slabs that had fallen flat had been overlooked. ‘On a few’, wrote Burgess in the briefest of reports, ‘there were carvings in very low relief and of an archaic type … Some letters on other slabs are of the Maurya type and must date about 200 to 170 B.C.’
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Burgess made a drawing of the best of these carved slabs which he added to his official report. It is a far more sophisticated version of the scenes shown on the damaged slab from Amaravati in the Musée Guimet and on the upper panel of the Amaravati slab in the Chennai Museum.

These three scenes all portray a
Chakravartin
or ‘Wheel-turning Monarch’. The concept of the world-conquering Wheel-turning Monarch has its roots in early Vedic literature as the sovereign who creates an age, and from whom flows moral order, happiness and power based on the cosmic law underpinning the universe. In the Brahmanical context he wields a
chakra
, a disc-like weapon, to destroy his enemies, which becomes the instrument of Vishnu with the evolution of Hinduism. However, these images from Amaravati and surrounds show the Wheel-turning Monarch as taken over by the Buddhists and made their own. Here the Chakravartin is a secular counterpart to the Buddha who by following his Dharma conquers by moral force alone.
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The Jaggayyapeta bas-relief shows a
Chakravartin
, or ‘Wheel-turning Monarch’, surrounded by various symbols: at his feet, a saddled horse and elephant, both symbolising the Buddha; over his head an umbrella symbolising royalty; on his left his counsellor and treasurer; on his right a
yakshi
fertility figure; and in the background a
Dharmachakra
wheel on a pillar and a Buddhist
ratna
or jewel symbol on a second pillar. The Chakravartin has raised his hand to cause gold to fall from the clouds.

A fourth slab from Amaravati completes the picture. This now forms part of the Amaravati marbles gallery at the British Museum and dates from Amaravati’s last phase. Here the Wheel-turning
Monarch is magnificently ornamented and wears a cloak of the finest filigree or gauze, his status indicated by the royal umbrella held by the female attendant behind him. Now he has only one counsellor and his queen has been outranked by the fly-whisk-bearing
yakshi
, or fertility goddess, who stands at the king’s left shoulder.