Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c12.s1.2

c12.s1.2

EARLIER TRADITION AND SYMBOLISM : The Stūpa now associated primarily with Buddhism had a much earlier origin. It goes back to the Ṛigveda where the flaming pile of Agni's light is spoken of as a Stūpa (RV. 7. 2. 1)¹; the Stūpa is compared to the outspreading form of a tree standing erect (RV. 1. 24. 7)². We also find there the idea of a descendant of Aṅgiras (a name of Agni) called Hiraṇya-stūpa, the Golden Stūpa, who had invoked god Savitā as the supreme pile of splendour implying that both Agni on earth and Savitā in heaven are like the two golden Stūpa from which cosmic life emanates. In Vedic symbology Gold examplifies the Seed of Life (*Prāṇa*), and thus the Mound of Gold (*Hiraṇya-stūpa*) or the Pillar of Fire was regarded as the appropriate symbol of the life principle as it exists in the individual and the universal. In pre-Buddhist tradition the Stūpa had come to be accepted as the monument associated with the life of a *Mahāpurusha*, who was regarded as a "Mound of Gold" or "Pile of Light" (*Agni Skandha*). Verily, in nature Sūrya or Savitā is such a Pillar of Light or Mound of Gold, a vast conflagaration of Divine Resplendence. The Buddha who had obtained such perfection of knowledge and become the Enlightened One (*Bhagavān, Samyak-Sambuddha*), 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 (*Śarīra-dhātu*) was deposited in a commemorative Stūpa. Of these eight, seven were