Consider the following statements about Stupas and choose the correct option from below : A. The word ‘Stupa’ is an architectural term and means something which is raised up by accumulation. B. The custom of erecting ‘Stupas’ as a form of memorial to the dead was pre-Buddhist.

Correct — option (3), A and B both are true.

Statement A is true. Radha Kumud Mookerji's Hindu Civilization (1957) explains the stupa as literally 'something raised', a mound, and says it came to be used as a Buddhist architectural term for a mound containing relics.

B. M. Barua's Barhut records that the Pali thupa denotes 'a conical heap', 'a pile' or 'mound', and that the verbal form thupikata means 'heaped up'. A stupa is a mound built up by piling earth or brick.

Statement B is true. V. S. Agrawala writes that the stupa, although now associated primarily with Buddhism, 'had a much earlier origin'.

A. H. Longhurst's The Story of the Stupa (1936) calls the tumulus the prototype of the Buddhist stupa and says such tumuli existed in India long before the advent of Buddhism.

The Buddha's own injunction in the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta, as Agrawala quotes it, asks for a stupa for the Tathagata at the four cross-roads, like the stupa raised for a Chakravarti king.

Both statements hold, so the code is option (3), A and B both are true.

The idea to remember: stupa = a heaped-up mound, and memorial mounds over the dead are older than Buddhism.

Why the others are wrong

• (1)
  Only A is true. — This code rejects B, but B is true. Agrawala says the stupa 'had a much earlier origin' than Buddhism, and Longhurst traces it to tumuli that existed in India long before the Buddha.

  Only A is true would fit if B had called the memorial stupa a Buddhist invention.

• (2)
  Only B is true. — This code rejects A, but A is true. Mookerji gives the literal meaning 'something raised', a mound, and calls stupa a Buddhist architectural term; Barua glosses the Pali thupa as a heap, pile or mound.

  Only B is true would fit only if the word stupa meant something other than a built-up mound.

• (4)
  A and B both are false. — Both statements match the sources: the word means a heaped-up mound and is used as an architectural term (Mookerji, Barua), and memorial mounds over the dead predate Buddhism (Longhurst, Agrawala).

  Both false would need the stupa to be neither a heaped mound nor older than Buddhism.

A stupa is a mound, typically hemispherical, built over relics or to mark a sacred spot. Barua shows that in the Pali Canon the stupa appears first as a funeral monument enshrining remains collected from the pyre.

Longhurst separates relic stupas, called dhatugarbha (dagaba in Sinhalese), from stupas that contained no relics and only commemorated events in the Buddha's life.

The earliest stupas, he writes, were low circular brick mounds like their pre-Buddhist prototypes; later stupas grew taller in proportion to their base.

Key facts

• Mookerji explains stupa as literally 'something raised', a mound, used as a Buddhist architectural term for a relic mound.
• Barua records that the Pali thupa means a conical heap, pile or mound, and thupikata means 'heaped up'.
• Longhurst (1936) calls the tumulus the prototype of the stupa and says such tumuli existed in India long before Buddhism.
• In the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta, the Buddha asks for a stupa at the four cross-roads, like that raised for a Chakravarti king.
• Longhurst gives the Piprahwa stupa as about 22 feet high and 116 feet across, and Sanchi's as 54 feet high and 120 feet across.

Common traps

• Treating the stupa as a Buddhist invention: memorial mounds are older, and Buddhism adopted and developed the form.
• Confusing stupa and chaitya hall: a stupa is a solid mound, while a chaitya hall is a building that can house a stupa in its apse.
• Forgetting the word's other sense: Barua notes that in the Rigveda and later, stupa denotes the top-knot of hair; the heaped-mound sense is the one statement A describes.

UnlockIAS will link similar questions from RAS Pre 2023 and 2018 here once those papers are published on this site.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pali word 'thupa', corresponding to the Sanskrit 'stupa', literally denotes —

  • (a)a heap or mound
  • (b)a cave hall
  • (c)a pillar
  • (d)a gateway
  Answer(1) — Barua records that thupa denotes a conical heap, a pile or a mound. Option (2) describes a chaitya hall, option (3) a stambha, and option (4) a torana, which Longhurst gives as the Sanskrit name for the gateways.
• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta, where does the Buddha tell Ananda a stupa for the Tathagata should be raised?

  • (a)At the four cross-roads
  • (b)Inside a monastery
  • (c)On the bank of a river
  • (d)Beneath the Bodhi tree
  Answer(1) — Agrawala quotes the injunction: at the four cross-roads, as for a Chakravarti king. Barua likewise notes that the stupas enshrining the relics were to be built where four cross-roads met. Options (2), (3) and (4) are not the place named.