Bhattiprolu stupa · Telugu History

The stupa (relic mound) at Bhattiprolu stood in the Krishna delta, about four miles from the river’s main channel. Locally its mound was called Lanja dibba.¹ It was one of a chain of Buddhist sites along the lower Krishna, including Amaravati, Jaggayyapeta, Ghantasala and Nagarjunakonda.² A. H. Longhurst thought that the river, then larger and navigable to the sea, connected them.² Little of the building survives, but the relic deposit at its centre is one of the best-documented finds of early Buddhist South India.

Terms

A stupa is a solid dome raised over relics of the Buddha. Around its base ran a raised procession path, and beyond that stood a stone railing. At Bhattiprolu, as at Amaravati, the base had projecting platforms facing the four cardinal points (north, south, east and west).³ The relics were sealed inside the brickwork in relic caskets, nested containers of stone and crystal.⁴

Destruction in the 19th century

The mound attracted official attention in 1870–71.¹ Boswell reported on it to the Madras Government, and Walter Elliot wrote about it.¹ By then it was being dug up for materials.¹ Its large, good bricks went into road-making.¹ Its marble slabs went into a sluice on the Krishna canal, where Rea could still see some built into the floor.¹

An Assistant Engineer, Norris, inspected what was left.¹ He found a solid but very irregular mass of brick, about 14 feet high, made of bricks about 1 ft 6 in by 2 ft.¹ A narrow shaft ran down its centre.¹ From the slope of the sides he estimated that the original cone had been about 66 feet high.¹

Sewell’s visit

Robert Sewell visited a few years later and found the mound “absolutely demolished”.¹ Villagers told him it had recently been a lofty dome with a procession path and a marble railing or wall about four feet high.¹ A Public Works employee also described a detached carved pillar about 15 feet tall.¹

The officer who supervised the demolition told Sewell that the mound had been 30 to 40 feet high.⁵ He had found inside it a stone box made of six dovetailed (interlocking) slabs.⁵ It held a clay pot, a “soapstone” casket and a crystal phial with a pearl, gold leaf and ashes.⁵ The stone box and pot were broken, and the soapstone casket was smashed on the voyage to England.⁵ The crystal phial was given to Dr. Burnell.⁵

Boswell recorded a local belief that the mound hid treasure worth “five crores”.⁵ Rea blamed such treasure stories for the destruction of many stupas.⁶

Rea’s excavation of 1892

Because of the demolition, Rea found that the true centre of the building now lay well to the north of the mound’s middle.⁷ The central courses were whole.⁷ Eight large bricks radiated around a small central well.⁷ A ring of sixteen wedge-shaped bricks surrounded them, with clay filling between.⁷ Rea thought this plan resembled, perhaps on purpose, a lotus flower.⁷

Following this well downward, he found three inscribed relic caskets.⁸⁹¹⁰ They lay at depths of 14½, 17 and 18 feet below the summit.⁸⁹¹⁰ The foundations lay at 23 feet.⁸⁹¹⁰

The three caskets

The first casket contained a round stone box with a crystal phial inside it, which held a small piece of bone.⁸⁴ Around the phial lay gold flowers, pearls, beads and twenty-four small silver coins arranged in a svastika.⁸⁴

The second contained a crystal phial without any visible relic.⁹ It also held many gold flowers, beads, and a rolled strip of silver with three lines of pricked letters.⁹ In the third, a tiny casket of beryl inside a crystal phial held three small fragments of bone.¹⁰¹¹ All the finds went to the Madras Museum.¹²

Rea argued that inscriptions sealed in the core of a stupa must date its foundation.¹³ Inscriptions carved on its outer parts, by contrast, might be added later.¹³

Size and plan

At the south-east, trenches exposed the unbroken face of the dome and its brick basement.¹⁴ The dome measured 132 feet across.¹⁴ With the 8-foot basement or raised path, the total was 148 feet.¹⁴ This was larger than Burgess’s estimate of about 138 feet for the base of the Amaravati stupa.¹⁴

Eight feet beyond the basement, Rea found six marble rail bases still in position.¹⁴³ They were closer together than the rail posts at Amaravati.¹⁴³ He guessed that the rail had plain lens-shaped bars like those at Sanchi.¹⁴³

Men who had removed the marbles for the canal described them as plain slabs about four feet square, set against the basement wall.³ Rea concluded that, as at Jaggayyapeta, only the panels on the four projections had been carved.³

The few carved pieces he recovered include fragments of a marble umbrella, a pilaster capital with horses and riders, and half of a slab with a draped figure.¹⁴ He compared the old style of these pieces with the sculpture at Jaggayyapeta.¹⁴

Date

The date comes from the casket inscriptions.¹⁵ G. Bühler judged from their letter forms that they cannot be later than about 200 BCE and may be somewhat earlier.¹⁵ Their script is an otherwise unknown variety of Brahmi (see Bhattiprolu relic-casket inscriptions).¹⁵

Later reports of the Archaeological Survey cited the deposits as evidence of Buddha relics enshrined in the delta by about 200 BCE.¹⁶ By 1908 the Imperial Gazetteer described the stupa as largely destroyed.¹⁷¹⁸ It noted that its caskets were kept in the Madras Museum.¹⁷¹⁸