In which of the following stupas, the features of a plateform with 'Aryak-Pillars' are found ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Amaravati. The commission's key marks Amaravati, and Amaravati is indeed the type-site of the tradition in question: its Mahachaitya on the Krishna is the monument that gives the Andhra school of stupa architecture its name, and the ayaka platform is that school's signature. An ayaka platform, or ayaka-vedika, is a rectangular offset projecting from the drum of the stupa at each of the four cardinal points, carrying a row of five free-standing ayaka pillars. But the question as printed is defective, and a student should be told so plainly rather than taught something false to justify the key. The ayaka platform is NOT peculiar to Amaravati — it is the common feature of the stupas of the lower Krishna valley as a group, and it occurs at Nagarjunakonda and Ghantasala as well, both of which are printed here as options. Nagarjunakonda's ayaka platforms are especially well documented, from the third-century renovations financed by the Ikshvaku princess Chamtisiri. Of the four options only Bodhgaya is genuinely excluded. So three of the four could be defended, the key marks Amaravati as the type-site, and the takeaway a student should carry away is the feature and the region rather than a single site.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Marked wrong by the key, but not actually excluded by the feature. Ghantasala, in the lower Krishna valley of Andhra Pradesh, belongs to the same school of stupa building as Amaravati and shares its ayaka platforms. It is a weaker choice only in the sense that Amaravati is the famous type-site of the school; it is not a site from which ayaka pillars are absent, and no honest explanation should say that it is.  (b) The one option that is genuinely wrong, and the only sound elimination in the question. Bodhgaya in Bihar is the place of the Buddha's Enlightenment, and its monuments are of an entirely different character — the Mahabodhi temple with its tall pyramidal tower, the Bodhi tree and the Vajrasana — rather than a drum-and-dome stupa of the Andhra type. It lies far outside the lower Krishna valley in which the ayaka platform developed.  (c) Marked wrong by the key, but a defensible answer on the evidence. Nagarjunakonda, the Ikshvaku capital in the Krishna valley, has ayaka platforms that are among the best recorded anywhere, described in the excavation literature as rectangular offsets carrying the customary row of five pillars. Do not learn this option as a site without ayaka pillars. Learn instead that a candidate who chose it was reasoning correctly and was defeated by the way the question was framed.

Concept: A stupa is a solid hemispherical mound raised over relics, built up from a drum (medhi), a dome (anda), a railed enclosure (harmika) at the summit carrying the mast and umbrellas, a circumambulatory path and a surrounding railing pierced by gateways. The stupas of the lower Krishna valley in Andhra added one element found nowhere else: at each of the four cardinal points a rectangular platform was thrown out from the drum, and on it stood a row of five free-standing pillars, the ayaka pillars. The five are conventionally read as the five great events of the Buddha's life — his Birth, the Great Renunciation, the Enlightenment, the First Sermon, and the Mahaparinirvana. On stone-faced stupas these platforms carried the richest carving on the monument and served as altars for offerings.

State PCS 2022 Q75 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q75 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer