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OCCASIONAL PUBLICATION 86

IICFrom to Museums: Contextualising Sacred

by Salila Kulshreshtha The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and not of the International Centre.

The Occasional Publication series is published for the India International Centre by Rohit Khera

Designed and produced by Dee Kay Printers, 5/37A Kirti Nagar Indl. Area, New Delhi-15, Tel.: 011-41425571, Email: [email protected] Occasional Publication 86

From Temples to Museums: Contextualising Sacred Sculptures*

Introduction

The classic Uma Mahesvara image shows and Uma seated together on the same pedestal, caught in an intimate embrace. While Shiva may be seated on a stone cushion or lotus throne, sits on Shiva’s lap or thighs. Parvati is always shown with two arms, while Shiva may have two, four or even more arms. Shiva is depicted as taller, and Parvati small and almost child-like. They are both surrounded by a halo, bedecked in jewellery and carry different ayudha (weapons and ornaments) in their arms. Often their vahanas (animal mounts), Parvati’s tiger, and Shiva’s Nandi bull, and other deities like and , and devotees are also portrayed. The image represents cosmic procreation as well as the synthesis of two powerful and independent deities. I first came across the image of Shiva and Parvati as Uma Mahesvara in the Museum; I was fascinated by the grace of this image as much as by its unabashed depiction of conjugal love. What incited my curiosity was the large number of these images found in the museum. What was the significance of the icon? Why were so many varieties of this particular image found from sites of over a long time period from the 5th century to the 13th century?

Figure 1: Uma Mahesvara, Kashtaharini Ghat, represents the icon in its ‘classic’ Eastern Indian pose; 9th to 10th century; now at , accession no. 6837; photo courtesy AIIS, Gurgaon

*Lecture delivered at the India International Centre, New Delhi by Salila Kulshreshtha on 10 January 2018 1 Salila Kulshreshtha

My engagement with the Uma Mahesvara icon is neither to describe the scriptural or spiritual meanings that surround it, nor discuss its chronology or evaluate the aesthetics of the sculptures which has often been done in the typical art historical fashion. I approach the Uma Mahesvaramurti in its particular eastern Indian manifestation to trace its original ritual and architectural context. In my perception, sacred images are alive and from the moment of fabrication, through their lives, they inhabit different places, interact with a variety of people and travel large distances; sometimes even undertake air travel crossing international borders. At each stage of their existence, and at each location of their placement, their identity and purpose alters.

By tracing the biographies of the Uma Mahesvara images, I will enter the shrines where they were originally located. The original architectural placement of the icons vis-à-vis their later relocation will suggest how their identities have changed and their original purpose has been forever lost; while the sacred sites where they were located were consequently reconfigured and reinvented. Religious icons have been a contested terrain across the world. Their implications and understanding travel further than the artistic or the aesthetic, and inform contemporary preoccupations.

As a methodological approach, I will use religious sculptures as the main source of historical investigation, and study them without comparison to textual prescriptions as is the general norm. By highlighting the architectural context and ritual use of the images, I will also create a historical narrative of sites from South Bihar, and a striking aspect of the sites which emerges is their apparent polytheism in motifs, images and sects. It is common to find Buddhist, Jain and Hindu images within the same sacred space and still under worship. At what moment do the sites of South Bihar then begin to acquire a monotheistic Buddhist identity? How were the existing sacred sculptures, especially those under worship, misrepresented to fit a particular notion of the past and a convenient configuration of sacred spaces? Through the course of the paper, I will discuss how colonial interventions in the 19th and the early 20th

2 Occasional Publication 86 centuries reinterpreted the study of this past through the introduction of new disciplines such as archaeology, art history and iconography. By using a particular image type in a regional context, I will highlight significant issues in Indian archaeology such as the reuse and sharing of sacred space by adherents of different faiths, and the rebuilding of temples and consequent reinvention of sites where these images were located and thus situate the icon within a religious context.

The region discussed is that of the middle Ganga valley: the area south of the river Ganga in the present day state of Bihar.1 The temples and sites referred to are those built from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Current historiographical stance tends to the region as the original Buddhist homeland, its history framed by the succession of dynasties: the Mauryas, the Sungas, the Guptas, the Pala, the Senas and so on. This traditional historiographical stance, in a typical colonial fashion, divides the history of the region into successive Buddhist-Jain, Hindu and Muslim periods where one religion supersedes the previous one. Within such a model, history becomes fragmented without any scope of sharing or assimilation of religious ideas or ritual praxis. As an alternative historiographical model, historians and anthropologists studying the social dimension of religion and temple architecture from north and between the 8th and the 13th centuries have placed them within the paradigm of ‘feudal economies’ of the ‘early medieval period’ where temple complexes and artistic proclivity have been examined as a direct corollary of political systems, personal patronage of rulers, economic decentralisation accompanied by a wave of Brahmanisation in (Sharma, 1974; Bhattacharya, 1982; Chattopadhyaya, 2003: 233- 62).

The art historical approach has studied religious sculptures from the point of view of aesthetics outlining the meanings, symbols, mythology and physical description of Hindu sculptures (Rao, 1997; Pal, 1988). An alternate approach has surveyed the sculptures as illustrations to religious texts and examined them on how closely they depict the textual descriptions (Banerjea, 1956). In recent years, there has been a shift in

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focus and scholars have dealt with the ritual and architectural placement of the images (Desai, 1996); their cultural significance and purpose (Thapan, 1997; Chitgopekar, 1998); and relocations (Davis, 1997; Juneja, 2001) and so on.

The Icon

My approach to the Uma Mahesvara images was to first understand the imagery and architectural context of the icon, and I started with a handful of sculptures now found in museum collections across Bihar, published records, online photo archives and catalogues. As expected, while a large number of these images were found in museums and private collections, but a substantial number also lay scattered in various shrines. I then tabulated them across various parameters, including find spot, time period, material used, and stylistic type and mapped them to examine spatial and temporal similarities and variations (Kulshreshtha, 2018).

In my first round of the survey of secondary and online sources, I found about 80 Uma Mahesvara sculptures from Bihar. On closer examination of the image type, I realised that there was immense variation in the style of execution of the images—in body posture, placement of hands and legs, facial expression, back slab, subsidiary figures and so on, (Donaldson, 2007). Uma Mahesvara sculptures from Bihar were created in a variety of stones such as granite, sandstone, slate, etcetera and even in bronze and ashta dhaatu (a traditional alloy of eight metals). The most popular stone however was black basalt which is typically associated with images from eastern India between the 8th and the 12th centuries (Kramrisch, 1994:12).

The largest concentration of Uma Mahesvara images in Bihar are from the southernmost districts of Patna, Jehanabad, Rohtas, Gaya, Aurangabad, and Nawadah and a second pocket of concentration lies along the river Ganga in the districts of Bhagalpur and Munger (see attached map). What struck me is that this is a region seen as the heartland of Buddhism, with and Nalanda being premier centres, and and are Jain centers. The city of Gaya

4 Occasional Publication 86 meanwhile is associated with the rite of shraddha (the Hindu ritual to honour the ancestors), and is now a preeminent Vaishnava centre. Against this backdrop, the presence of Uma Mahesvara images at all of these sites suggests evidence of a strong Shaiva cult.

Figure 2: Map of South Bihar; prepared by Mrs Uma Bhattacharya Over time, I have found more than 150 Uma Mahesvara sculptures from this region alone. The largest number of these images can be dated from the period between the 9th and the 12th centuries, and the oldest image in my data is dated between the 5th and 8th centuries. Later, images found from the 12th to 13th centuries show how the sculptures became more detailed and excessively ornamented over time.

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Sculptures in Museums

Figure 3: Bronze Uma Mahesvara, Kurkihar; now at Patna Museum, accession no. 9624; photo courtesy AIIS, Gurgaon Some of the Uma Mahesvara images are presently found in museums and private collections and have been catalogued, and some published. I visited many of these museums, but what was more difficult to track were the Uma Mahesvara sculptures from Bihar which are now present in museums across Europe and the USA. It was both fascinating and astounding to see how these sculptures from the remotest of villages and sites of Bihar have travelled to so many different museums and art collections across the world.

In India, the images are found in a variety of museums, where the context and taxonomies of their display vary greatly. Excavated sculptures often find their first home in site museums that house artefacts from a particular site of excavation such as at Nalanda and Bodh Gaya. A large number of these images are now stored and displayed in the Patna Museum, meant to showcase the pride and identity of the state of Bihar. In districts, which have their own museums, such as at Gaya, Bhagalpur and Nawadah, the images are retained within the districts. Sometimes, due to exceptional historical and cultural circumstances, many of the sculptures from Bihar have also travelled outside the state to the Indian Museum at ; 6 Occasional Publication 86

National Museum at New Delhi; Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya at Mumbai (formerly Prince of Wales Museum); Allahabad Museum, etcetera.

Uma Mahesvara Sculptures Abroad

Location Museums United States of America Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Cleveland Museum of Art; Rockefeller Collection etc. Europe , London; Museum fur Indische Kunst, Berlin; Reijksmuseum, Leiden, Netherlands; Pan-Asian Gallery of Art, Zurich, Switzerland etc. Auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s

Sculptures in Temples

This was just one half of the story; on reading excavation reports, going through photo archives, etcetera, I found that a large number of Uma Mahesvara images were still located at various historical sites, and continued to be in worship in temples and in domestic shrines. My tabulation of Uma Mahesvara images in museums also left me wondering that if there are so many surviving images where are the temples in which they were once enshrined? In which parts of the temples were these images enshrined; in the sanctum, on the outside walls, or on gates. What was the original context of their use; was it ornamental or ritual?

To answer these questions, it is important to trace the sacred topography of South Bihar, and understand the original architectural and ritual placement of these images before their discovery and relocation to museums and galleries in the 19th century. The oldest shrines in Bihar are rock-cut cave sanctuaries located in the Barabar Hills, in . The caves can be dated to the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE, and were dedicated to Buddhist and Ajivika monks by King and his 7 Salila Kulshreshtha

grandson Dasharatha. From the 5th–6th centuries in Bihar, as elsewhere in north India, free standing, single-room-shrines—both Hindu and Buddhist—began to be constructed. The earliest shrines were made of mud and were later embellished with stone sculptures. The earlier rock-cut shrines also came to be reused and ornamented with stone sculptures. It is likely that the earliest images were housed in structures like these (Asher, 1980).

By the 8th–9th centuries, the original mud-brick shrines that probably started to collapse were replaced by more elaborate structures. The stone sculptures from the older temples however survived, and these came to be enshrined in the newer structures. Apart from the main shrine, the temple complexes also came to accommodate several smaller structures: subsidiary shrines which housed the avataras (incarnations) of the main deity, tanks, residence for priests, walls, gateways, etcetera. With so many structures, there was a need for more images, and a large number of stone sculptures were hence produced in Bihar during this period.

By the 11th–12th centuries, there was still another round of temple renovations, and one can see large, multi-religious architectural complexes dotting the religious landscape of Bihar, where shrines from different sects and religions could be accommodated within the same religious complex. A temple complex could hence have different shrines dedicated to , , Shiva and even to the . These would require still more images to be enshrined and to decorate the walls of the temples. We hence have a large number of images which can be dated to this period.

By tracing the evolution of temples in South Bihar from rock-cut caves to stand-alone shrines, and later into large, multi-religious architectural complexes containing smaller shrines, tanks, trees, pillars, rocks, etcetera, it is possible to chronologically map the different sacred centres in this micro-region (Dhaky, 1991; , 1991). What is even more interesting is to observe how through local legends, living and oral traditions, these sacred landmarks are even in the present day integrated into ritual networks, established by communities of practitioners, ritual 8 Occasional Publication 86 specialists and through patterns of economic exchange. Each shrine and sacred landmark has its own mythologies of origin and often through the use of the itihasa purana tradition, these shrines have been reinvented over centuries to be used even in the present day.

The existing corpus of secondary literature is however not sufficient to answer questions of the original architectural and ritual placement of the images, and it is important to understand ground-level practices to see first-hand how shrines were organised, how images were placed in temples, what their cultic and ritual significance was, and more so how these ancient images are perceived in the present day.

Notes from the Field

Patna Museum

I began my fieldwork from the Patna Museum where I started locating the Uma Mahesvara sculptures which I had so far seen in books and catalogues. The Patna Museum was established in 1917, as the first museum in the newly made province of Bihar and Orissa. Before the formation of the new province, all the excavated remains from the sites in Bihar and Orissa were taken to the Indian Museum in Kolkata. After the establishment of the Patna Museum, the state of Bihar requested that these artefacts be sent back to their original home state. The museum has a vast collection of over 45,000 objects acquired from various sites in Bihar, from private donors and they also bought and borrowed items from other museums. Of all, the Uma Mahesvara images from the museum that I had recorded, only a few were displayed in the galleries; the rest were in storage and I also found some images that I had not previously seen.

One of my most interesting discoveries while I was reading the original accession registers of the museum was the existence of a certain ‘’ from which a number of Uma Mahesvara images were acquired. The curator told me the fascinating story of the Bihar Museum, which no longer exists, but which would have had a significant impact on the fate of religious sculptures of Bihar and on the history of the sites from which these were acquired. 9 Salila Kulshreshtha

In the late 1860s, A. M. Broadley was the district magistrate of Biharsharif (about 11 kilometres from Nalanda) (Broadley, 1872: 209–312). Like many of his contemporaries, he was on a mission to excavate sites connected with the life of the Buddha as recorded in various historical texts. With the help of prisoners he had at his disposal, he went about excavating sites around Nalanda. These excavations were obviously not scientifically planned or executed. From the antiquities he collected, he established an open air museum at his official bungalow and called it the Bihar Museum. After his death, his collection was transferred to the Indian Museum where the original find-spots of these sculptures were catalogued as ‘Bihar’. Later, parts of this collection were shifted to the Patna Museum where it was again said to be from ‘Bihar’; and the original site of these sculptures was hence lost forever (Asher, 1970: 105–124). The sculptures continued to move around, some of these have travelled abroad and many are now housed in the new Bihar Museum at Patna.

Figure 4: Uma Mahesvara from Broadley Collection; now at Patna Museum, accession no. 7881; photo courtesy AIIS, Gurgaon

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Thus, colonial modes of discovery and amateur excavations have had a significant impact on the way we study the sites of Bihar. The personal collections of colonial officers, many of which are now lost; their partial interpretation and haphazard conservation of sites, and the making of museums must have caused a significant movement of sculptures and the loss of their original context.

Mapping the Shrines

The second part of my field trip included mapping temples in which I had located enshrined Uma Mahesvara sculptures. On the basis of my data on sculptures, I set out to visit villages. Very often in this pursuit, conversations with the villagers proved to be very helpful. They not only guided me to the shrines in the neighbourhood, but also provided me with valuable advice on the location of archaeological mounds and other locations which housed sculptures of interest. The field trip changed everything for me as the realities at ground level were very different from anything I could have imagined.

A typical, modern Shaiva shrine from the region usually has a small garbhagriha or the sanctum which contains an ancient linga while the enclosing walls contain other ancient sculptures; of Parvati, Ganesha and often Uma Mahesvara. Lined up outside the temple are other ancient images dated between the 9th and 12th centuries from other older temples, now destroyed. Very often, the modern shrine is built on the remains of an older temple or sits atop a possible ancient settlement. Next to the temple is often a tank where the annual festival of chhatth dedicated to the sun god is held each year. A neem, or a banyan or a pipal tree can also be seen in the sacred complex.

Most temple sites tell stories of how these ancient sculptures of deities were discovered from the adjacent tank, and that these were originally enshrined in an older temple on the same site. At the time of the Islamic raids of the 12th-13th centuries, they were hidden in the tank where they lay forgotten. The same story is repeated at many other shrines in the area, whether dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, Devi or the Buddha. Moreover,

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once the idols were recovered, the villagers and pujaris (priests) did not differentiate between the Hindu and the Buddhist sculptures, and it is common to see a Buddha statue worshipped as an avatara of Vishnu, or a small miniature being worshipped as a linga. The categorisation of sacred space in village shrines as being either Hindu or Buddhist or Jain is more theoretical than real, since deities of different faiths harmoniously inhabit the same sacred space.

On the one hand, while I tried to locate these architectural complexes horizontally through a web of shrines; I have also located them vertically through time. Archaeological remains show how there was continuous rebuilding and reconfiguration of sacred space, and it is not possible to read a unilinear takeover of sites from Buddhist to Hindu to Islamic, for boundaries are blurred and overlapping. In such a dynamic religious landscape which was constantly being reinvented, the Uma Mahesvara icon became a crucial indicator of the presence of Shiva, and came to be used in the Shaiva temples as one of his manifest rupa (forms). The images were generally placed in niches on the side walls of the garbha griha, where the central enshrined icon was a linga. Uma Mahesvara images were also found on the entrance of the sanctum, used for ornamentation on faces of pillars or carved on the outside walls along with other Hindu images. The motif was strategically dispersed in and around various temple complexes to establish the presence of Shiva.

Nalanda

A site of particular interest to my research is Nalanda, as my data showed that several Uma Mahesvara sculptures were found in the monastic complex itself, and I found this rather intriguing. What was this Hindu doing at a Buddhist that dates to as early as the 3rd century BCE? My visit to the Nalanda site museum confirmed the presence of many Uma Mahesvara icons from the monastery area, as well as from numerous villages in the immediate vicinity.

The monastic complex at Nalanda has received a lot of scholarly attention and is an important tourist destination; the area in the immediate vicinity

12 Occasional Publication 86 however stands neglected. I attempted to informally survey and map this neighbourhood to see the kinds of shrines and sculptural remains which survive. The village of Bargaon immediately outside the monastery area is of particular interest. Similar to what I had seen elsewhere, Bargaon is located on the banks of a very large tank called Suraj Pokhar around which a series of modern temples are built, the most important being the Suraj Temple in the heart of the village. All of these modern temples house a rich collection of black basalt images and architectural fragments which are worshipped and duly anointed. Most images are of Hindu deities and there is a very distinct Shaiva presence here. There are many surviving Uma Mahesvara images in the Suraj Temple, and in the other temples on the banks of the tank. It is interesting to note how such a large Hindu establishment thrived in close proximity of this famous Buddhist monastery. On the basis of sculptural and architectural remains, the temples can be dated between the 9th and 12th centuries which was also the period when the Nalanda monastery had a new spate of life under the patronage of the Pala rulers, and close connections developed between the Buddhist of Bihar, and other Himalayan Kingdoms. Excavations have also established a number of sites and structures in the monastic complex at Nalanda to this period.

A second significant site near the Nalanda monastery is in the village of Jagdishpur, where the temple called the Rukministhan is dedicated to Krishna’s wife Rukmini. The temple, protected under the Archaeological Survey of India, consists of a single-celled shrine with a towering , inside which is a 12 feet high-seated Buddha image, half buried in the ground. The shrine is now associated with Vaishnava legends, and the Buddha is worshipped as Krishna and the accompanying Boddhisatvas as Rukmini. Legends associate the monastic complex, located about 2 kilometres away as the palace of Rukmini’s father where she lived, and from where she came every day to worship at this shrine and from here Krishna abducted her. Religion and folklore have invested new meanings, identity and role to this ancient Buddha image, identifying it with people and events from Hindu mythology.

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Figure 5: Colossal Buddha at Rukministhan, Jagdishpur, Nalanda; photo author’s own

A third interesting temple in Nalanda is that of Telia Baba—where a Buddha in Dharmachakrapravartana (this depiction of the Buddha is also called the Wheel of Law depicting Buddha’s first sermon after his enlightenment) is worshipped as Bhairava by villagers, and offered oil (tel) for his power of healing diseases. Thai pilgrims to the region meanwhile worship him as the Black Buddha.

It is apparent that legends and oral traditions have been used to weave the different shrines together and relate it to the monastic complex. The archaeological sites in the region, even after they collapsed, continued to exist in popular memory, through the utilisation of the itihasa purana tradition, when new histories and mythologies of sites were fabricated and where older icons acquired new identities so that they could be integrated within the themes of the Hindu Epics and the Puranas (Ray, 2014:23). It was hence not a Hindu resurgence, but a renegotiation where older myths were retold, new legends were formulated and various participants were introduced to the existing pantheon. The surviving images and shrines were used to fit into this tradition through living traditions, oral narratives and ritual networks and were legitimised through centuries of repetition and practice. 14 Occasional Publication 86

In 2016, Nalanda was nominated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, as an ancient seat of learning.2 A major lacunae of this definition has been that its interaction with the immediate hinterland has been ignored though inscriptional evidence underlines the economic dependency of the monastery on the surrounding agricultural belt. The scholarly attention moreover has remained confined to the structures only in the excavated Buddhist monastery, and has neglected to accommodate the context of sculptures and other religious motifs found at the site. In all these studies, the site has been conceptualised merely in terms of an ancient ‘university’ and its Buddhist remains, the and have been understood as associated with different events from the life of the Buddha and his disciples. In such an endeavour, the topographies of other religions have been marginalised. The has been looked at as a self-contained unit without much interaction with the other sites in its vicinity, and the different layers of habitation through the centuries stand ignored (Kulshreshtha, 2018b; Ray, 2014:23).

Bodh Gaya

The second UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bihar is Bodh Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. UNESCO has listed the complex for its unique cultural and religious value and takes into purview the Mahabodhi Temple and the .3

There are two sites in Bodh Gaya which are of particular interest to me, with evidence of Uma Mahesvara images. The first is the Mahant’s Compound, the residence of the Shaiva Mahants (priests) located near the Mahabodhi Temple complex. Inside this 17th century residence is a shrine-cum-museum restricted to the public. It includes a remarkable collection of Buddhist and Hindu images, inscriptions and architectural fragments including lintels, door-frames, etcetera, all under worship. Daily worship and offerings are made in the Hindu ritual tradition as evident from offerings of vermillion, flowers and incense. At least 9 Uma Mahesvara images in various postures abound in this collection. I was astounded by the sheer numbers of the images as well as by their aesthetic quality and immaculate state of preservation. 15 Salila Kulshreshtha

The images must have been collected over several centuries from other Hindu and Buddhist shrines around the Mahabodhi Complex, of which we have no knowledge today. It is also possible that some of the images came from the Mahabodhi Temple itself before its conservation in the 18th century. The collection of icons at the Mahant’s house is only one instance of denuding the Mahabodhi Complex, and its environs of its icons. The Mahants of Bodh Gaya, unlike other , are buried in cemeteries rather than cremated, and close to the Mahant’s living quarter is a cemetery complex for the monks. of two early Mahants are also located in front of the Mahabodhi temple itself. The cemeteries are marked by several votive stupas used as lingams to indicate their religious affiliation asShaivite monks. Votive stupas used as lingams are not unique to Bodh Gaya, but can be seen across sites of South Bihar often enshrined in modern temples. This once again reflects upon the smooth transition in the identity of religious icons from Buddhist to Hindu. Owing to the sanctity of Bodh Gaya, and the fact that sculptures and architectural fragments would have been littered at the site, these were also often used by the local people as construction material to build their houses, being used on door steps, lintels and pillars. The appropriation of relics and sculptures from Bodh Gaya continued into the 19th and 20th centuries, in the name of conservation, once the site was ‘discovered’ by British surveyors and archaeologists.

A second interesting site is a tree shrine under a pipal tree, located to the immediate north of the Mahabodhi Temple. This has a collection of Hindu images which have been worshipped for centuries, including Uma Mahesvara, Vishnu and Ganesha sculptures dated between the 9th and the 12th century. These are provided flowers in an act of daily worship, just as the Buddhist ones are, suggesting that the iconographic distinction may be more important to art historians than to devotees. Francis Buchanan when he first visited the site in 1811 also reported seeing this tree shrine. Later in 1825-30, it formed the subject of a painting of Charles D’Oyly called The Bodhi Tree at the Bodh Gaya Temple. When the Burmese came for renovation of the Mahabodhi complex in 1881, they left an inscription on this same Uma Mahesvara image enshrined here. More

16 Occasional Publication 86 recently D’Oyly’s painting of this tree shrine has graced the cover of Janice Leoshko’s book Sacred Traces (Leoshko, 2003).

Surviving sculptural remains from Bodh Gaya suggest how the site has changed over centuries. In recent history, the site has been subject to contestations and debates and issues over its ownership between Buddhists and followers of Shiva. Images are scattered all over the landscape and the present-day conservation of the Mahabodhi Complex only tells a part of the story. Religion at Bodh Gaya is deeply intertwined with daily life, and what is important to understand is how the site and the sacred space has a history of continuous habitation and ritual practise; it is important to highlight this continuity rather than merely identify periods of growth and decay.

Gaya

Lying just 13 kilometres away from Bodh Gaya is the city of Gaya, famous for its significance in the shraadh circuit. It has been suggested that the Buddha came to Bodh Gaya because of this close association of Gaya with the shraadh ritual.

Despite these early references, Gaya’s largest and most important monument, the Vishnupad temple is a product of the 18th century and not one of the ancient temples that dot this pilgrimage centre, dates earlier than the 13th century (Asher, 1988). The images enshrined in most of the temples however are older as attested by numerous inscriptions found here. Based on the present configuration of shrines and the building material used, it can be concluded that substantial building activity was undertaken here post-13th century. The new shrines were built upon the site of the ancient shrines using much of the older images and architectural material. For instance, inscriptional records attest that from the 14th through 19th centuries, various spates of reconstruction took place in and around the Vishnupad when the temple complex grew larger and more intricate. It seems evident that not merely a series of shrines were woven into a network, but a sacred geography was being demarcated (Vidyarti, 1978). Along with the River, other sacred spots came

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to be marked with trees: the banyan and the neem, and included secular structures like monasteries, mathas, cultivable land and tanks in the vicinity of the principle shrine. The crowning moment in the history of Gaya came sometime post 13th century with the composition of the ‘Gaya Mahatmaya’, an Upapurana praising this ancient site and establishing its superiority over others. Several Puranic and Epic accounts as to the origin of the Gaya temple were also composed during this period. At the same time, inscriptions also indicate a continued traffic of pilgrims and a site alive with activity. All these textual traditions seem to have been composed to provide additional legitimacy to an ancient site which was being reinvented through building traditions.

Other sites in the vicinity of Gaya also came to be tied up with the pinda ritual, and included temples dedicated to Shiva, Surya and the Devi (a Shakti pitha called Mangala Gauri, where ’s breasts fell is also located within the Gaya city). The ritual of the shraadh demands that the worshipper visits the different shrines in the Gaya city, and makes offerings at each of these. The ritual circuit thus ties together all the shrines within the Gaya city, as also with Bodh Gaya, the Bodhi tree itself being the last compulsory stop of pinddaan (offerings made to the deceased ancestors).

Tying the Thread Together

Figure 6: Contextualising images, ancient images reused in a modern temple; 18 photo author’s own Occasional Publication 86

At what moment do the sites of South Bihar begin to acquire a monotheistic Buddhist or Hindu identity? Ancient history is not given but is selectively represented, and there have been two significant periods when the was being rewritten. The 19th to 20th century saw the beginning of archaeological explorations in Bihar when colonial surveyors and officers undertook travels, made collections and established personal and private museums. The temple sites were consequently reorganised (as per the colonial perception of temple lay-outs based on texts), in the name of conservation and many religious sculptures were dislocated. In this process of rediscovery, while some images continued to be worshipped, a large number of these were moved into museums and lost their sacred identity, being viewed instead as art objects. The colonial discourse on the sacred sites, shrines and icons from South Bihar created certain nomenclatures and identities, and more importantly fixed permanent religious categories within which to view them. For example, in their quest for a pristine Buddhist past, when archaeological sites were explored and artefacts listed and documented, any relic which did not suit this vision was discarded and treated as merely incidental. Icons such as the Uma Mahesvara which were associated with were side lined as being inconsequential to the Buddhist history of Bihar. The Uma Mahesvara icon in particular incited contempt for its blatant portrayal of conjugal love and was even branded as ‘indecent.’

A second spate of history writing came in the 1920s and 30s when the state of Bihar was newly constituted and efforts were made to establish its regional and cultural identity. Museums became significant tools to spread ideas of regionalism and nationalism. The newly established museums, through their narratives of display, cataloguing and nomenclature presented a visual archive which codified the parameters within which religious images were to be viewed, thus shaping the study of iconography. For instance, the galleries were utilised to popularise the Buddhist history of South Bihar with sculptures and relics gathered from the different sites associated with the life of the Buddha. The museums, through their taxonomies, also reaffirmed the colonial version of a sequentially arranged, linear history of Bihar as Buddhist, Mauryan,

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Gupta, Pala, Sena or more conveniently as Buddhist-Jain-Hindu and Muslim.

The identities established through colonial archaeology continue to define the paradigms within which we view the region and its history. Any discussion of the history of Bihar is focussed around the themes of its Buddhist past, the glories of Ashoka and the Mauryan Empire. The symbols from Bihar which appear in popular visual culture generally include the Mahabodhi Temple, the monastic complex at Nalanda, icons of the Buddha in bhumisparamudra, stupas and Ashokan pillars and so on. Even the name of the state Bihar as per legends was apparently derived from the fact that the area was dotted with . The Vishnupad continues to be a significant shrine in the region with a pan-India appeal and a must stop for making shraadh offerings; yet the Buddhapad from Bodh Gaya is a more reverberating icon.

This state-directed construction of history and delineation of what qualifies as heritage continues to echo the 19th and 20th century colonial paradigm of highlighting a certain moment in the history of the region devoid of their archaeological and temporal contexts. A significant reiteration of this process in the post-colonial era is the listing of sites and monuments of ‘Outstanding Universal Values’ as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Can we attach a ‘universal’ value to a specific heritage? (Labadi, 2012:7).

In 2002, UNESCO listed the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya on the World Heritage List, and in 2016 the monastic complex at Nalanda Mahavihara. The ‘universal’ tag limits the scope of the site, and seems like a repetition of similar listing and documentation undertaken by the in the late 18th century when sites and sculptures were classified on the basis of religion or as religious and non-religious, thus freezing them at the moment of construction and ignoring patterns of their long term usage. The UNESCO listings also limit and define the boundaries within which the sites are seen by judging all archaeological sites across the world by the same parameters, and ignoring changes wrought about by time, communities of users and geographical 20 Occasional Publication 86 locations. It takes into purview a single dimension of heritage and by emphasising upon monuments and built structures, it leaves no place for oral histories, living memories or participation in ritual networks. By making monuments out of shrines, and attempts at conservation actually disengage the local population who use the sites and bring out its varied importance. Similarly sacred sculptures and other motifs are seen as ornamental and the multiple identities which they can navigate through are largely ignored.

Through my innovative approach to religious sculptures, by understanding them in their architectural and ritual settings, I have traced how the context, meanings and purpose of religious sculptures change through history. Religious icons do not depict a certain moment of religious encounter, but a whole gamut of experiences as crucial components of well-integrated ritual networks. Museums provide fixed meanings to sculptures through the narratives of display and exhibition which are artificially created around them. To overcome this narrow interpretation, it is crucial that religious iconography is understood within the religious landscape for which they were originally created. It is critical to hear the multiplicity of voices from the past to understand the multiplicity of meanings behind shrines and icons, drawing from the several layers of inhabitation and usage. This can only happen if we begin to understand the scope of religious sculptures not merely as illustrations to texts and philosophical traditions but as independent of them.

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Notes 1 I define the area as ‘South Bihar’. This is not to be confused with the present day state of Jharkhand. ‘South Bihar’ is the area south of the Ganga covering the current districts of Patna, Jehanabad, Nalanda, Rohtas, Aurangabad, , Gaya, Sheikhpura, Munger and Bhagalpur. 2 Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara () ‘comprises the archaeological remains of a monastic and scholastic institution dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. It includes stupas, shrines, viharas (residential and educational buildings) and important art works in , stone and metal. Nalanda stands out as the most ancient university of the Indian Subcontinent. It engaged in the organised transmission of knowledge over an uninterrupted period of 800 years. The historical development of the site testifies to the development of Buddhism into a religion and the flourishing of monastic and educational traditions.’ http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1502 accessed on 9 January, 2018. 3 The Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya ‘is one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Lord Buddha, and particularly to the attainment of Enlightenment. The first temple was built by Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century BC, and the present temple dates from the 5th or 6th centuries. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick, still standing in India, from the late period.’ http://whc. .org/en/list/1056 accessed on 9 January, 2018.

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References Asher, Frederick M. 1970. ‘The Former Broadley Collections, ’, Artibus Asia, 32, pp. 105–24. ––––1980. The Art of Eastern India, 300–800. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ––––1988. ‘Gaya: Monuments of the Pilgrimage Town’, in Janice Leoshko (ed.), Bodhgaya: The Site of Enlightenment. Mumbai: Marg Publications. Banerjea, J.N. 1956. Development of Hindu Iconography. Calcutta University. Second Edition. Bhattacharya, N.N. 1982. History of Tantric Religion. New Delhi: Manohar Broadley, A.M. 1872. ‘The Buddhistic Remains of Bihar,’ Journal of Asiatic Society of , Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 209–312. Chattopadhyaya, B.D. 2003. ‘State and Economy in North India: Fourth Century to Twelfth Century,’ in B.D. Chattopadhyaya (ed.), Studying Early India, pp. 233–62. Chitgopekar, Nilima. 1998. Encountering Sivaism: The Deity, the Milieu, the Entourage. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Davis, Richard H., 1997. Lives of Indian Images. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Desai, Devangana. 1996. Religious Imagery in Khajuraho. Mumbai: Franco-Indian. Dhaky, Meister and Krishna Deva (eds.). 1991. Encyclopedia of Temple Architecture, Vol. 1, Period of Early Maturity. New Delhi: AIIS, OUP.

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Donaldson, Thomas E. 2007. ‘Shiva, Parvati and the Allied Images’, Perspectives in Art and Archaeology, Vol. 8. New Delhi: DK Printworld. Juneja, Monica. 2001. Architecture in Medieval India: Forms, Contexts, Histories. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Kramrisch, Stella. 1994. ‘Pala and Sena School’, in Barbara Stoller Miller (ed.), Exploring India’s Sacred Art: Essays by Stella Kramrisch. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Series, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Kulshreshtha, Salila. 2018a. From Temple to Museum: Colonial Collection and Uma Mahesvara Icon in the Middle Ganga Valley, Routledge. ––––2018b. ‘Removable Heritage: Nalanda beyond the Mahavihara’ in H.P. Ray (ed.). Decolonising Heritage in : The Global, the National and the Transnational. Routledge (forthcoming). Leoshko, Janice. 2003. Sacred Traces: British Explorations of . UK: Ashgate Publishers. Labadi, Sophia. 2012. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage and Outstanding Universal Value: Value Based Analysis of World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention. AltaMira Press. Pal, Pratapaditya. 1988. India Sculptures, vols. 1 and 2, Los Angeles County Museum in association with University of California, Los Angeles. Ray, H.P. 2014. The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation. New Delhi: Routledge. Rao, T.A. Gopinatha. 1997. Elements of Hindu Iconography, part I, first published in Madras, 1914. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publisher.

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Sharma, R.S. 1974. ‘Material Milieu of Tantricism,’ in R.S. Sharma (ed.), Indian Society: Historical Probings, In Memory of DD . New Delhi: ICHR. Thapan. Anita Raina. 1997. Understanding Ganapati: Insights into the Dynamics of a Cult. Delhi: Manohar. Vidyarti, L.P. 1978. The Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya. Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, first published in 1961

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Salila Kulshreshtha secured her PhD in History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research focuses on tracing how the spatial relocation of sacred sculptures brings about a change in their identity and ritual purpose. She has worked on issues of urban heritage and heritage education with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) (2004) and with the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai (2011- 2012). She has recently published her book From Temple to Museum: Colonial Collection and Uma Maheshwara Icon in Middle Ganga Valley (Routledge:2018).

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