2025 Theses Doctoral

The Early Buddhist Art of Phaṇigiri: Innovation and Ideology in the Riverine Deccan, ca. 1st-4th centuries CE

Ramachandran, Kalyani M.

The early Buddhist site of Phaṇigiri, located on a hill in the ancient Āndhradeśa region of the eastern Deccan, and bounded by the Kriṣna and Godāvarī river systems, has yielded a fragmentary and limitedly understood architectural and sculptural corpus from at least the first to the fourth centuries CE. The early evolution of the site coincides with the proliferation of stone construction in Deccan or south India, and predates its Hindu monuments and Islamic structures by several centuries. The site’s later development corresponds to the decline of active construction of ancient Buddhist complexes in Āndhradeśa, and the rise of Brahmanism in the region, the scholarship on which is limited by the “Deccan gap,” or absence of contemporaneous textual sources.

In five chapters, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘉𝘶𝘥𝘥𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘩𝘢ṇ𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘪 studies the architecture, sculpture, coins, and inscriptions at the site alongside a presentation of new photographs and maps. It shows that the monastic program of Phaṇigiri, bookended by a landscape dotted with megaliths and a memorial stone, was transformed by a long history of donation for construction, expansion, and repair. The vitality of the early Buddhist site was reflected in narrative reliefs and free-standing sculpture which drew upon, and extended beyond, canonical artistic traditions. The material basis of Phaṇigiri’s architectural program and sculptural corpus was a system of patronage that was non-royal in nature, reflecting local ideologies and broader cross-cultural concerns, thereby challenging the applicability of dynastic labels, such as “Ikṣvāku,” typically used to describe the site. This distinctive art was mobilized by an active network of production—comprising itinerant supervisors and sculptors—along the interlacing rivers of the Deccan as they flowed into the eastern Indian Ocean. Through a close reading of the art on site despite, and through, its fragmentation, The Early Buddhist Art of Phaṇigiri highlights the relationship between the early Buddhist site and stonework to establish that Phaṇigiri was a dynamic local idiom of the Deccan school of early Buddhist art in premodern South Asia.