8 - Borobudur's Pāla Forebear? A Field Note from Kesariya, Bihar, India

Summary

THE RISE OF THE PĀLA DYNASTY in the 8th century ad brought paradigm shifts in Buddhist text, ritual, and sacred architecture that sent cultural waves across the expanding maritime and land trade routes of Asia. This chapter focuses on how the architectural concepts travelled in the connected Buddhist world between the Ganges valley and Java. A movement of architectural ideas can be seen from studying the corpus of the temples in the Pāla (ad 750–1214) and Śailendra (ad 775–1090) domains of India and Indonesia. This chapter proposes that we see a paradigm shift in the design of a stūpa architecture at Kesariya (Bihar) that emphasizes the arrangement of deities in the circular maṇḍalic fashion with a certain numerological configuration of life–size Buddha figures placed in the external niches of the monument. This new architectural concept possibly played a key role in the development of a more elaborate structure of Borobudur in Java.

The architectural linkages emerge stronger with the central fivefold structure of the temples of the Pālas and Śailendras. In order to make the essential comparison, a quick method of drawing architectural plans is developed that is based on the basic measurements and not archaeological plans.

ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN STŪPA STRUCTURE

The main archaeological sites of the middle and lower Ganges plain were recorded in the 19th century by Alexander Cunningham, following the travel accounts of the Chinese scholar-pilgrims Faxian (ca. 337–422) and Xuanzang (ca. 602–64). Northeast India contained not only early Buddhist stūpa s and monastic complexes, but also a range of stūpastructures that advanced from the traditional hemispherical stūpaof Sanchi, through the cruciform, terraced stūpa structure of Nandangaṛh (Fig. 8.1) to the elaborate stūpa-maṇḍala of Kesariya. Most of the Pāla structures that may have served as a model for Central Javanese temples are in dilapidated state today, making it difficult to track the architectural borrowings.