When we think of ancient Indian Buddhist art, do we often focus on northern sites like Gandhara or Mathura? Hidden along the rivers of South India lies the site of Phanigiri, home to early Buddhist sculptures from the 1st–4th centuries CE.
In this talk, Dr. Kalyani Madhura Ramachandran leads us beyond northern-centric scholarship to explore Phanigiri’s architectural and artistic development. She highlights regional patronage networks, including the vital contributions of non-royal and female donors, and situates Phanigiri within broader artistic exchanges across the Deccan, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.
Abstract:
The Indian subcontinent is home to one of the oldest and most continuous histories of stonework. The development of this artistic tradition is intertwined with the spread of Buddhism in the region, as chronicled by Chinese pilgrims, monks, and travellers, including Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. Yet the scholarship over the last century has concentrated on northern and central regions of the Indian subcontinent despite evidence of over a hundred contemporaneous sites in ancient Andhradesa (modern-day Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka states). This talk focuses on one such site: the early Buddhist monastery at Phanigiri. Located on a granite hill, and bounded by the Krishna and Godavari River systems, the site has yielded an extraordinary though limitedly understood architectural and sculptural corpus dating from at least the first through the fourth centuries CE. The early evolution of this complex coincides with the extraordinary proliferation of stone construction in Deccan (southern) India and predates its famous Hindu monuments and Islamic structures by several centuries. The site’s later development corresponds with the enigmatic decline of active construction of ancient Buddhist complexes and the rise of Brahmanism in the region—the scholarship on which is limited by the “Deccan gap” or absence of authoritative textual sources. This talk shows that a close attention to the art on site can productively overcome the issue. It demonstrates that the monastic program of Phanigiri was transformed by a long history of donation for construction, expansion, and repair. The vitality of the growing site is reflected in carved narrative reliefs and free-standing sculpture, both of which innovatively drew upon—but extended beyond—the canonical artistic traditions of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda (capitals of the Satavahanas and Ikshvakus respectively). The material basis of this corpus was bolstered by a singular system of patronage comprising non-royal and female donors, reflecting both local ideologies and broader cross-cultural concerns, and thereby challenging the applicability of dynastic labels, such as “Ikshvaku,” typically used to describe the site. Ultimately, the distinctive art at Phanigiri was mobilized by an active network of production—comprising itinerant supervisors and sculptors—along the interlacing rivers of Andhradesa as they flowed into the eastern Indian Ocean. Through an engagement with the site despite—and through—its material fragmentation, this talk highlights the relationship between the early Buddhist site and stonework, and shows that Phanigiri was a dynamic local idiom of the Deccan school of early Buddhist art at the moment of its transmission across Southeast and East Asia.
