Studies in Indian Art c13.s5.t2.2

c13.s5.t2.2

We may go even earlier, and we find that the stūpa monument, when standing under the open sky, had also its free standing pillars. The mounds of thick yellow clay rammed as hard as stone, at Lauriya Nandangarh offer typical examples. Their contents indicate that they were burial mounds. In the particular mound in which a piece of gold-leaf with the figure of the Earth Goddess was found, a little below that level was discovered a long hollow shaft 10" in diameter showing that once a wooden pillar was placed there. In another adjoining mound the shaft of the wooden pillar was found *in situ*. We have another instance in the A'okan pillar installed in front of one of the Gateways of the Great Sānchi Stūpa. Probably reference to a wooden pillar (*sthūṇī*) associated with a mound of earth raised over the relics of the departed ones may be traced to the Ṛigveda X. 18. 1.¹ The Sabhāparvan refers to such a pillar erected on the top of a *śmaśāna chaitya* as *chaityayūpa*, the two together invoked as a befitting *upamāna* in point of loftiness to Viṣṇu riding on Garuḍa.²