ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL Jainism and local cults.6 These data have Landscape, water and religion in ancient India shed new light on inter-religious dynam­ ics, and on the development of exchange Julia Shaw networks between Buddhist monks and As Buddhism spread into central and western India fr om its agricultural communities. centre oforigin in the central Gangetic Plain, how did thischange Subsequent field seasons were aimed at the ways in which the landscape was perceived and organized? refining and develop existing results, and testing earlier hypotheses with new meth­ In thisstudy of the regional settingof the great site of Sanchi and odologies. Two seasons concentrated on of other important sites in central and western India, religious, the history of local irrigation through a political, economic and agricultural changes are integrated in an combination of hydrological and archaeo­ holistic approach to archaeological landscapes. logical methods, including the collection of sediments from dams and reservoir beds for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) his project was initiated in 1998 in the area or how they set up exchange dating and analysis of ancient pollen.7 with the objective of building networks with local populations. Other seasons have focused on systematic an integrated model of reli­ mapping and satellite remote sensing for T gious, economic and environ­ The Sanchi survey: research design testing the degree of concordance between mental history in both central The Sanchi survey was aimed at redressing already-identified archaeological remains and western India through the documen­ some of these problems, through a multi­ in the application area and levels of visi­ tation of key ritual and settlement sites, phase archaeological survey carried out bility within a subset of different satellite and water-resource structures in their over an area of c. 750 km2 around the hill­ imagery.8 The latter produced variable archaeological landscape.1 Key research top complex (Fig. 2). Initial exploration results: in areas where forest clearance has questions include: How did the spread of between 1998 and 2001 resulted in the sys­ taken place, the high-resolution Quickbird the new religions (especially Buddhism) tematic recording of about 35 Buddhist satellite imagery served as a useful aid to between the third century BC and fifth cen­ sites, 145 settlements,4 17 irrigation dams5 on-site mapping, especially for hard-edged tury AD relate to other key processes such and over 1,000 sculptural and architec­ structures such as Buddhist monuments as urbanization, state formation, economic tural fragments associated with Hinduism, (Fig. 3).9 However, dense vegetation cover change, and innovations in agriculture? How did incoming religious communities • city belonging to fi rst phase of urbanization (c. 6th century BC) establish themselves in new areas? How did they build up patronage networks with 0 city belonging to second phase of urbanization (c. 3rd century BC) @ Buddhist site site associated with the life or teachings of the local populations? How did they situate historical Buddha in the Gangetic valley themselves within the pre-existing ritual •Charsada e Buddhist site outside the Gangetic valley (c. 3rd century BC) landscape? The project's primary focus is the Sanchi survey study area oTaxila UNESCO World Heritage Buddhist site of Sanchi in central India (Madhya Pradesh), with some comparative investigations at other sites in central and western India such as Ramtek (Maharashtra), Junagadh and Devnimori (Gujarat) (Fig. 1). Sanchi's Kurukshetra• y<'j earliest monumental history dates from • Hastinapura s approximately the third century BC, and Indraprastha• is closely connected with the patronage �<%, . (Delhi) • � "kl Kap1lavastu of the Mauryan empire, whose expanding AtranJl 1era • @Lumbini Mathurao boundaries mirrored, in part, the early 'o Sravasti' @l.Kusinagara movement of Buddhist monks from the 0�_,0 :or>\ Vaisali{jl middle Gangetic plains. Both its distance <:>' G'�'-0 D Pawwaya @Sarnath oPataliputra fromthe cradle of Buddhism and its prox­ ®. Gaya Tumaho ¥f Kausambi Ra)ghat!" @ imity to the early-historic city ofVidisha,2 � •Rajgir c2 Bharhut@ just 6km to the north, made Sanchi a suit­ Vidishao Bodhgaya able case study for examining the socio­ Sanchi Eran . • Ujjain• o Trip ut economic and religious background of Nin a tr o 9t Buddhist propagation. The site is also an ]'lortllod � archetype for a variety of theoretical and A1ah anadi bunagadh �\ methodological problems in South Asian ".,0 B A Y Ajanta• archaeology in general, and the study of Sisupalgarho Buddhism in particular. For example, Bud­ 0 F dhist archaeology has mainly been focused DPratisthana on well known, grandiose monuments, studied in isolation from their surround­ B E N G A L ing landscape and the populations living ARABIA N in them. Thus, despite the large body of art-historical and epigraphical scholar­ S E A N ship at SanchV the site's relationship to other ritual or habitational settlements in the area had not been examined prior to the 0 km 500 current study. This obviously hampered t the understanding of how incoming Bud­ Figure 1 Ancient India, showing key Buddhist and urban centres, and Sanchi survey dhist communities established themselves study area in centre. I 43 _j ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL Figure 2 Th e Sanchi Survey study area, km N land over 440 m showing Buddhist sites, settlements and + -dam dams. Place names are either those of topo­ 0 + Buddhist silo graphical features (such as the hill at And­ her) or the names of the nearest modern + t 0 settlement site 0 villages to the various sites or site clusters. 0 (A nala is a seasonal river or stream.) 0 0 0 + -t across much of the hilly region ruled out 0 0 ' + +. -loB esnagar its effectiveness as either a mapping or 'l>e + primary site-detection tool. Further, in the 0 Vidisha+ 0 0 agricultural zone, sites such as settlement o mounds or dams that showed up clearly in 0 e + 0 the satellite imagery are already high up ao dO 0 + Ferozpur 0 cP the ground-based visibility scale: during Gulgaon 0 0 + 0 Satdhara' \ -I'Dargawan the primary reconnaissance phase, most of • 0 + 0 + these sites stood out as prominent earth­ ..r,8 + Karondih Sanchi + 0 0 � + I 0 works from surrounding hilltops. Finally, 0 0 Naroda 0 Nagauri o- --f 0 0 • many sites that rarely show up in satellite + -ho o imagery, such as hillside settlements, rock­ . 0 0 Dhakna 0 0 1 0 o Devrajpur shelters or springs and natural shrines 0 - o 0 More) + + 0 0 0 (small piles of rocks worshipped as a mani­ 0 0 o.., '-khurd 0 0 + festation of the divine) are more readily 0 + +o 0 detectable using traditional ground-based 0 0 o 0� 8 o 0 0 o o 0 survey methods and, more particularly, 0 Dabar n } 8 Andher+ a a Chandnao+ 0 o 0 through a sensitivity to the currency of #0 MJl.ei 0 � '{" 0 archaeological sites within the present­ of 0 0 r:JKala + day ritual landscape.10 However, remote­ 0 0 + sensing data derived from satellite images have been useful for generating survey con­ 0 tours that, together with sophisticated land­ based survey techniques, have enabled /\ dam 0 monastery walls --- reservoir boundary Figure 3 Monastery remains on Ferozpur hill: high-resolution Quickbird satellite imagerywith superimposed GPS-derived mapping data. 44 ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL Buddhist propagation, the state, and patronage networks Although these three processes - religious change, imperial expansionism, and urban­ ization - were evidently linked, there are major problems, which the Sanchi survey sought to redress, concerning the precise nature of this relationship, and its wider ramifications in rural hinterland areas. A major causal factor here is the lack of hori­ zontal excavation at many early-historic city sites, with settlement histories often based on limited vertical sequences, and the traditional site-based focus of South Asian archaeology, which rarely looks beyond individual sites to patterns in the wider archaeological landscape. Further problems stem from outdated models that assume that the distribution of Mauryan edicts represent the extent of a unified political entity.13 There are also major questions surround­ Figure 4 Stupa remains on Andher hill, c. second century BC ing the second major phase of Buddhist propagation in the post-Mauryan period, accurate calculations to be made of the and imperial expansion can be tracked between the late second century BC and the probable original areas and volumes of through the distribution of Ashoka's edicts first century AD. Whatever the role of the ancient reservoirs in the area. carved on pillars and rocks, fromAfghan­ state in the formal establishment of Bud­ istan to southern India;12 many of these, dhism in central India, it is during this later Sanchi and Buddhism in central like the Ashokan pillar at Sanchi, stand period of stupa building that Buddhism India within Buddhist compounds. This is also becomes firmly rooted in the rural land­ Sanchi is one oflndia's best preserved and when urban culture, already prevalent in scape. Inscriptions reveal that this work most studied Buddhist sites, with a con­ the Gangetic valley for several centuries, was funded not, as before, by state patron­ tinuous constructional sequence from the spreads westwards, as is attested by the age but by extensive programmes of col­ third century BC to the twelfth century AD. archaeological sequence at Vidisha and lective patronage supported by powerful Its earliest history was closely connected