• largest at Sanchi
• 250-25 BCE
• It was begun by Ashoka (c.250 BCE), then enlarged (50-25 BCE).
• One of Ashoka's pillars stands at the south entrance. T
• the central mass is an earthen, hemispherical mound faced with fired bricks, with a shallow berm (medhi) ringing its base.
  

• monumental stone gateways known as toranas.
  
• imitate wooden construction
• consist of two vertical pillars supporting three horizontal bars with a lift at their center.
  
• The beams end in volutes that connote sacred scrolls.
  
• The surface is elaborately decorated with a narrative program that would have been devised not by craftsmen but by the monks of the site.
  
• These gateways instructed pilgrims in the basic themes of their religion.
  
• Some were stories of the Buddha's life and progress towards enlightenment; and others told the story of the historical person, Gautama, and his path to Buddhahood (Enlightenment).
  
• Note that Hinayana Buddhism did not permit direct representations of the Buddha, showing him instead via symbols (for example, a wheel, footprints, or a throne).
  
• Only after the 2nd century CE, through the influence of Mahayana Buddhism, do images of the Buddha become common.

• Lishan
• circa 210 BCE
• An outer wall of rammed earth encloses a 2 sq km area
• the main entry is on the east, but with others on the three other sides
• Within this compound is a second walled area with four gates.
  
• This is centered on the 350 sq meter burial mound itself.

Zhou's Protective Walls 

Note that there is no single Great Wall of China. Instead, there are several great walls built by different dynasties for different reasons. What most people refer to as the Great Wall is the wall built during Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

• On the Ganges
• Vedic period: 1,500 to around 500 BCE
• The key religious site of this period

• There are over 8000 of them in total
• Vault #1
  • The largest excavated area
  • 11 parallel trenches contain over 3000 figures, facing away from the emperor's tomb.
    
• Vault #2
  
  • chariots and calvary
• Vault #3
  
  • seems to be the command post, where the figures are mainly officers.
    

• 6th century BCE
• Possibly response to the warfare during Vedic period
• Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, or Enlightened One; c.563-483 BCE) 
• sorrow is unavoidable because one craves things that perish; and that only Nirvana, the end of consciousness, ends the sorrow.
  
• The Middle Path of good conduct and compassion, balancing indulgence and renunciation, became the Buddhist credo.

• represent the adaptation of a much older pillar cult in India, in which the pillar represented the axis of the world
  
• in some cases, Ashoka simply took these existing pillars and adapted them to his new use.
  
• The capitals of his pillars are ornate
• the shaft, not the capital, was of primary significance in these monuments;
  
  •  inscribed text (relaying Ashoka's dharma, or code of ethics) was inscribed.
• example of how monuments could be used to spread ideas across a vast territory in the ways that printing would do centuries later.
  

• Stupa means "piled up."
  
• King Ashoka had had the Buddha's bodily remains divided into eight parts and distributed throughout the realm as relics.
  
• The first stupas were built to preserve these relics. In time, stupas, built by the thousands, came to symbolize the body of the Buddha, as well as his enlightenment; they also became a kind of cosmic diagram linking the body of the Buddha to the cosmos.

• This round structure is surrounded by a stone balustrade (vedika) that imitates a wooden construction.
  
• The vedika is open on the four cardinal directions. These are accessed, however, at right angles, through bent entrances opening in a counterclockwise direction (see plan above).
  
• Together, cardinality and the bent entry forms a space-time cosmological diagram or mandala, in the form of a svastika shape.
  
• The directions represent space, and the bent entries (replicating the movement of the stars) represent time. The vedika gives spatial definition to the counterclockwise circumambulation ritual known as parikrama.
  
• The performance of parikrama is understood to bring the pilgrim into bodily harmony with the cosmic order.

• 100-70 BCE
• The focus of veneration in a caitya was a miniature replica stupa at the end of the prayer hall.
  
• Parikrama, hitherto performed in the open air at stupas, was accomplished here by walking around the miniature stupa via the aisle that ran around the U-shaped hall.

• 100-70 BCE
•  Note that many aspects of the rock-cut architecture imitate earlier, now-lost wood architecture, for instance, the ribs, inwards leaning columns, and even traces of joinery details.

• Satavahanas controlled the center and south of the Indian subcontinent
•  The Satavahanas were prosperous from trade, chiefly with Rome, and sponsored the construction of many Buddhist monasteries along trade routes, where they functioned as points of rest and exchange.
  
• c. 50-70 CE

• Kabul, Afghanistan
  
• 2nd c. CE
•  Accessed by a very large stairway
•  the stupa sits atop a high base.
  
• The cardinal directions are marked by deep niches with rounded arches, divided by pilasters that suggest the influence of Greco-Roman architecture.
• Built by the Kushan empire, who built a lot of stupas, Guldara is one of the few that survives
  • The Empire was to the north, originally came from NW China.
  •  They were traders and Buddhists, although their Buddhism had their own distinct elements in it. \

• central Afghanistan
• 507 and 554 CE.
• Bamiyan lay at the center of the trade routes linking China, India and the west
• large Buddhist monastery stood here
  • more than 100 caves carved out of the sheer cliff face.
    
• Amid these caves, the Kushan Emperor Kanishka ordered two gigantic Buddha statues to be cared from the rock.
  
• Visible from a distance, these huge statues took on the scale of the landscape itself.
  
• Traders arriving in the area would have emerged from tall narrow valleys into a much wider valley, and seen the cliff at the NW edge
• behind this cliff loomed the snow-topped Himalayas in the distance. Thus the Buddhas really were part of a landscape. T
• hey were originally built by cutting the shapes from the stone, then molding them with a mixture of mud and straw to make the details.
  
• The drapery was made with ropes
• Buddhas were originally painted in gold and bright colors.
  
• The only known precedents for statues on this kind of scale come from Egypt.

• Dunhuang river, China
  
• 500 created over a 1000 period around the 6th century
• Mahayana Buddhism
• key juncture of the Silk Road, at the end of a portion of the Great Wall, and surrounded by desert. From here, the Silk Road breaks north and south.
• Mogao was once a major Buddhist intellectual center
  • a whole city of caves inhabited by monks. Some caves are small, with room for a single monk, while others could fit 100 people.

• 539 CE
• mongao caves
• side walls are lined with niches for the monks to meditate in.
  
• Most of the caves are covered by paintings describing the life of the Buddha and various manifestations of Buddhist doctrine.
• Aesthetically, they are an amalgam of Indic, Central Asian, and Chinese influences.
• By the 4th and 5th centuries, the caves at Mogao were becoming complex, with short corridors leading from the entry to a transverse chamber with a simulated gabled roof.
•  Opposite the entry, the main Buddha image would be placed against a central pillar carrying various clay sculptures.
  
  • Worshippers would perform circumambulation around this central image.
    
• The walls would be covered with a mixtures of stucco and clay-straw, and then painted in very bright colors.
•  The sculptures here are not the most sophisticated in Chinese Buddhist art of this period, but the frescos are incomparable.
  

• 5th-6th centuries in the Northern Dynasty near city of Datong
• Unlike the Mogao Caves, which were inhabited by monks on a trade route
  • the Yungang caves were built near the city of Datong and had little resident monk population. They were instead meant for worship primarily by the urban population of Datong.

• The first five of the Yungang caves contained colossal statues of the seated Buddha, in the manner of Bamiyan.
  
• There is a theory that these Buddhas represented the five Northern Wei emperors, and that they were represented in this way in order to compete with the Confucian emperors of the South, who were openly deified.
  

• 595-605
• Engineer Li Chung 
• It is about 50 m long with a central span of about 37 m. The main arch is a segment of a circle but less than a full half-circle; with this low rise-to-span ratio, it places a lot of pressure on the abutments .
  
• The central arch is made of thin, curved limestone slabs which are joined with iron dovetails.
  
• There are two small side arches on either side of the main arch, which reduce the total weight of the bridge.
  
• Also, when the bridge is submerged during a flood, they allow water to pass through, thereby lessening the chances that the bridge will be torn lose by the water.