Studies in Indian Art c11.s1.4

c11.s1.4

The Stūpa although now associated primarily with Buddhism had a much earlier origin. It goes back to the Ṛigveda where the Golden Stūpa of Agni (हिरण्यस्तूप) is the type of the huge Pile of Splendour out of which the cosmos is produced. It was the very symbol of the life-principle conceived as the Mound of Gold or the Pillar of Fire, because in Vedic symbology gold exemplified the Seed of Life or Life itself. In pre-Buddhist tradition the Stūpa, therefore, was accepted as the monument associated with the life of a Mahāpurusha, who had truly become transformed into a "Pile of Light" or "Mound of Gold". Verily, in nature Sūrya is such a Pillar of Light or a Mound of Gold, a vast conflagration of Divine Resplendence. The Buddha who had obtained such perfection of knowledge and become the Enlightened One (भगवान्, सम्यक् सम्बुद्ध,), was truly the object of worship through the symbol of the Stūpa. As tradition says, his ashes were parcelled out into eight portions and each of them (शरीरधातु) was deposited in a commemorative Stūpa. Of these eight, seven were raised by Kshatriyas, viz. temporal powers, and the eighth by a Brāhmaṇa representing the Spiritual Authority of the Buddha. It means that the original Stūpa symbolism associated with the Buddha represented completely the two essential elements of his nature, viz. the Buddha as Chakravartī and the Buddha as Yogī which later on played an important part in the formulating of the Buddha's image, i.e. sovereign ruler with Chhatra and Chāmara and a Yogic teacher of universal Dharma seated on the diamond seat of Padmāsana.