ABSTRACT
Drawing on examples at Sanchi and the Sanchi-Vidisha hinterland, this chapter will focus on the stupa and associated relic cult as complex architectural manifestation of the ‘Buddha body’, its potency enhanced by a range of older, intersecting Indic religio-cosmogonic symbologies. It will begin with a detailed account of the main stupa monuments at Sanchi, and then, focussing on the dynamics of seeing (Pali: dassana), will present stupa construction and the establishment of relic networks across central India as a crucial component in the localisation of early Buddhism. In addition to the ritual dynamics of the Buddhist relic cult, the economic implications of stupa construction and in particular its role in early forms of land ownership and tenure are also considered, against a broader reappraisal of current theories regarding the entwined histories of monasticism, urbanisation and in particular the development of courtly urban ideology. In doing so, I will draw on broader landscape patterns relating to monastery, habitational settlement and land-use data, as well as less well-known datasets, such as monastic rock-shelters whose older association with hunter-gatherer populations helps to paint a more heterogeneous picture of the social environment in which the earliest monastic communities grew up.
