In Indian art, the construction of ‘Stupa’, ‘Chaitya’ and ‘Vihara’ is related to which of the following?

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Correct — C, Buddhism. The three words name the three functional buildings of a Buddhist monastic establishment, and they only make sense together. A stupa is a solid hemispherical mound raised over relics: the anda or dome sits on a medhi or drum with a pradakshina patha for circumambulation, crowned by a harmika enclosing the yashti and its tiers of chhatra, the whole ringed by a vedika and entered through toranas at the cardinal points. The Great Stupa at Sanchi — protected by the Archaeological Survey of India as 'Buddhist monuments, Sanchi' in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh — is the type specimen: a brick core of Ashoka's time in the third century BCE, doubled in size and faced in stone under the Shungas in the second century BCE, with the four carved gateways added around the first century BCE. A chaitya-griha is the congregational prayer hall — apsidal in plan, barrel-vaulted, divided by two rows of pillars into a nave and side aisles, with a votive stupa standing at the rounded far end so that worshippers can walk around it indoors. ASI protects the classic rock-cut examples as 'Cave temples and inscriptions' at Bhaja and at Karla in Pune district; Ajanta's Caves 9, 10, 19 and 26 are chaityas. A vihara is where the monks actually lived — a pillared central hall or open courtyard with small cells cut into three sides, a refectory, and in later examples a shrine chamber set opposite the door; Ajanta's Caves 1, 2, 16 and 17 are viharas. In eastern India the vihara scaled up into the walled mahavihara campus, which is what ASI's Bihar list records at Nalanda and at the 'Ancient site of Vikramasila Monastery' at Antichak in Bhagalpur. Relic mound, prayer hall, residence: that is the complete grammar of a Buddhist site, and no other Indian sect built to this three-part plan.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Ajivikas of Makkhali Gosala were a real renouncer order with real royal patronage in Magadha, which is what makes this the sharpest of the four distractors. But their surviving architecture is something quite different — the mirror-polished rock-cut chambers of the Barabar and Nagarjuni hills, dedicated by Ashoka and his grandson Dasharatha. ASI's Bihar list carries seven of them in Jehanabad district: the Gopi, Karan Chaupar, Vadathika, Lomas Rishi, Sudama, Vapiyaka and Visva Jhopa caves. They are plain excavated halls with a barrel-vaulted inner cell and a famous imitation-timber facade at Lomas Rishi, not stupas, chaityas or viharas.  (b) Vaishnava building vocabulary is temple vocabulary — garbhagriha, antarala, mandapa, shikhara or vimana, gopuram and the surrounding prakara wall. A Vaishnava shrine houses an image of the deity for darshan and its worship is conducted for a householder congregation by hereditary priests. It does not enshrine bodily relics in a solid mound, and it has no residential cell-block for a celibate order at its core, so two of the three terms in the question could never attach to it.  (d) Shaiva architecture is likewise temple architecture, built around a linga in the garbhagriha with a Nandi mandapa in front — the Kailasa at Ellora and the Brihadeeswara at Thanjavur are its scale models. Ellora is the trap here, because ASI protects it as a single group of 'Ellora Caves' in Aurangabad district in which Buddhist, Hindu and Jain excavations stand side by side; but its Shaiva caves, including the monolithic Kailasa, are temples, while the chaityas and viharas at the site belong to the Buddhist group of caves at the southern end.

Concept: Buddhist monasticism produced India's first large body of permanent religious architecture, and it did so in three linked forms. The stupa began as a funerary tumulus and, after the Buddha's parinirvana, became the object of worship itself — the relics were divided among eight claimants and Ashoka is said to have redistributed them into a great many stupas across his empire. Once a community formed around a stupa it needed a covered hall for congregational worship, which produced the apsidal chaitya-griha with its own votive stupa at the far end; and it needed somewhere to sleep, which produced the vihara. From about the second century BCE these were cut into the Deccan trap rock of the Western Ghats at Bhaja, Kondane, Pitalkhora, Bedsa, Karla, Nasik, Kanheri and Ajanta, faithfully copying in stone the wooden rafters, ribs and railings of the free-standing buildings that have not survived — a chaitya's stone roof still carries carved beams that hold nothing up. Bihar is unusually rich in every one of the three forms: ASI's protected list for the state records the Relic Stupa at Harpur Basant in Vaishali, the Buddhist Stupa at Tajpur Deur in East Champaran, the mound known as Sujata garh at Bakraur in Gaya, the Chhoti Pahari stupa and the five stupa mounds at Paharidih in Patna district, and the mahavihara complexes at Nalanda and Antichak.

State PCS 2023 Q61 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q61 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer