A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c11.s3.2

c11.s3.2

The small town of Amarāvatī (16° 35′ N., 80° 24′ E.) on the south bank of the Krishnā (Kistna) river, in the Guntūr District, Madras, represents a more important ancient city called Dharanikota, a place of considerable note from at least 200 B. C. A richly decorated *stūpa*, known to have been in good repair and still venerated in the twelfth century, continued to exist to the south of the town up to the close of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it was utterly destroyed by a greedy local landholder, eager to obtain cheap building material and convinced that marble slabs, plain or carved, formed excellent food for a lime-kiln. About a century ago Colonel Mackenzie visited the place and had drawings made of numerous slabs, now no longer in existence. Various archaeological explorers have salved remnants of the sculptures, which are now mostly housed in either the British Museum or the Central Museum, Madras. Our knowledge of the extraordinary richness of the decoration of the *stūpa* and its railing is derived from the poor remnants thus rescued and Colonel Mackenzie's drawings, which have been published fully by Mr. Fergusson and Dr. Burgess.