Jaggayyapeta stupa

The Jaggayyapeta stupa stood on Dhana Bodu, a low hill about a mile east of the town of Jaggayyapeta, near the meeting of the Paleru and the Krishna.¹²³ It is much smaller and far less complete than Amaravati.¹²³ Its early carvings make it important.¹²³ Burgess and Rea used them as a yardstick for the oldest phase of Buddhist art in the lower Krishna valley.¹²³ Its inscriptions span several centuries.¹²³

Discovery

Villagers had long dug into the brick mounds on the hill for building material.¹ In 1881 they unearthed carved slabs, which the local official took into custody and reported to Madras.¹ James Burgess examined the hill in February 1882.¹ He found traces of a group of stupas, mostly small, and of other early buildings.¹

All had been dug over for bricks and slabs.¹ Only one stupa, at the south-west, kept clear remains.¹ That stupa had lost its dome and railing, and its relic casket had been robbed.¹ The stone burns into good lime.⁴ Burgess thought that this was why no slabs could be found reused in the town: they had probably gone into the lime-kiln.⁴

The building

When excavated, the base of the stupa measured 31½ feet across.¹ (The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 gives 66 feet, a figure this page does not follow.)⁵ Like Amaravati, it was faced with slabs of a pale limestone.¹ Burgess believed this was quarried on the Krishna bank just south of the hill.¹ He thought the Amaravati slabs came from the same place.¹

The casing slabs stood about 3 ft 9 in above a paved procession path 10½ feet wide.¹ Nothing was left of the railing beyond the path except traces of the brick-and-lime footings for its posts.¹

Inside the casing, the stupa was built of layers of earth about two feet thick.⁴⁶ A close floor of large, carefully fitted bricks covered each layer.⁴⁶ Burgess explained this as a way of keeping rainwater from swelling the core and bursting the facing.⁴⁶ He thought the great stupa at Amaravati had probably been built the same way.⁴⁶

A fragment of the outer relic casket lay in the disturbed earth at the top.⁴ From this he concluded that the relic had been placed no lower than the base of the dome.⁴ At each cardinal point (north, south, east and west) the drum projected about two feet for a length of 12 to 15 feet.⁷ Only these projections carried carved slabs, apart from a pilaster on the edge of every slab.⁷

South-east of the stupa were the stumps of pillars set about 11 feet apart over an area of roughly 170 by 120 feet.¹⁴ They suggested a large hall.¹⁴ Burgess took it to be a place of assembly for visitors.¹⁴

Sculpture

The carving is in very low relief and old in style.⁴ On the casing slabs, a pilaster rises from a carefully carved base.⁴ Above the base stands a makara (sea-monster) or similar creature.⁴ On it stands a male or female figure, probably a yaksha (nature spirit).⁴ A heavy capital carries two winged animals.⁴ Burgess compared these with the sculptures at Bharhut and in the Pitalkhora cave, and with the earliest slabs from Amaravati.⁴

Two carved slabs attracted particular attention:

• One slab shows a pillared shrine with the footprints of the Buddha under a seat and an umbrella.⁴⁸ Female worshippers on it wear head-dresses that Burgess likened to those painted in Cave X at Ajanta.⁴⁸
• Another shows a tall man under an umbrella beside a wheel on a pillar.⁸ Square objects, perhaps coins, stream down from above.⁸ A woman, two young men, a horse and an elephant are shown at smaller scale.⁸ Burgess did not try to name the figure: “Who this represents we know not”.⁸

Burgess concluded that most of the early slabs at Amaravati had probably belonged to a similar casing on the first stupa there.² Rea later compared the archaic carving at Bhattiprolu to this work.³

Inscriptions

• Early letters. A few letters on the upper edges of casing slabs are too broken to give a name.⁴⁹ They are in characters of the Maurya type.⁴⁹ Burgess put them as early as the beginning of the 2nd century BCE.⁴⁹
• The ayaka pillar inscription. Tall pillars or stelae had stood in groups of five on each face.⁶⁷ These are the ayaka pillars seen on carved images of stupas at Amaravati.⁶⁷ One fallen pillar at the east was about 17 feet long even with its top broken off.⁷ The same Prakrit inscription appears on it and on two other pillar fragments.⁷ It is dated in the 20th year of King Madhariputa Siri-Virapurisadata of the Ikhakus (Ikshvakus).⁷⁹¹⁰ It records that the artisan Siddhartha of Mahakandurura set up five ayaka pillars at the eastern gate of the Great Chaitya of the Buddha at the village of Velagiri.⁷⁹¹⁰ Siddhartha was the son of Nagachandra of Nadatura in the province of Kammaka.⁷⁹¹⁰ He made the gift together with his mother, his wife, his children and other relatives, for the welfare of all beings.⁷⁹¹⁰ See Jaggayyapeta inscriptions of Virapurushadatta.
• The image inscription. A relief of the standing Buddha found on the path carries a Sanskrit inscription in letters of about 600 CE.⁹² It records that the image was made by Chandraprabha, a disciple of Jayaprabhacharya.⁹² Jayaprabhacharya in turn was a disciple of Nagarjunacharya.⁹²

Dating the Ikshvaku inscription: an older view corrected

Burgess put the ayaka-pillar script at about the 3rd or 4th century CE, “but possibly earlier”.⁷⁹ He thought King Purushadatta’s claim to Ikshvaku descent was “most probably an idle boast” by some unknown local dynasty.⁷⁹

Bühler placed the king in the 3rd century.¹¹¹² Then came the excavations at Nagarjunakonda, whose inscriptions Vogel published in 1933.¹¹¹² They brought to light records of the same Ikhaku dynasty.¹¹¹² These name Madhariputa Siri-Virapurisadata, his father Vasithiputa Siri-Chamtamula and his son.¹¹¹² J. Ph. Vogel identified the Jaggayyapeta king with the Nagarjunakonda Virapurisadata (see Ikshvakus of Vijayapuri).¹¹¹²

Vogel later added the Jaggayyapeta pillars to his list of the dated foundations of that king’s reign.¹³ He took Velagiri to be the old name of Jaggayyapeta.¹³ D. C. Sircar dated two Ikshvaku inscriptions by the cyclic year Vijaya to 273–74 and 333–34.¹⁴ In one of his reconstructions he placed Virapurushadatta’s reign about 255–75.¹⁴ The Archaeological Survey recorded small repairs to the remains in 1927–28.¹⁵

Footnotes

1. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 107 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹

2. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 112 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. Alexander Rea, South Indian Buddhist Antiquities (1894), p. 15 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 108 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²²

5. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 323 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

6. James Burgess, The Buddhist Stupas of Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 21 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 110 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

8. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 109 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

9. Burgess, Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta (1887), p. 111 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

10. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), pp. 224–225 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

11. J. Ph. Vogel, “Prakrit Inscriptions from a Buddhist Site at Nagarjunikonda”, Epigraphia Indica XX (1933), p. 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

12. Vogel, Epigraphia Indica XX (1933), p. 3 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

13. J. Ph. Vogel, “Additional Prakrit Inscriptions from Nagarjunikonda”, Epigraphia Indica XXI (1931–32), p. 65 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

14. D. C. Sircar, “More Inscriptions from Nagarjunikonda”, Epigraphia Indica XXXV (1963–64), p. 6 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

15. H. Hargreaves (ed.), Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1927–28 (1931), p. 4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩