Early Buddhist Art of Bodh-Gaya is an exercise in hermeneutic reconstruction of the text and context of the first century BC railing sculptures from the site, where the Buddha had attained enlightenment in the sixth century BC and where the diamond throne of the Buddha survives as a remnant from Asokan days in the third century BC. It investigates and corrects the subjective intellectual bias in a century and a half of writing of Bodh-Gaya, redirects attention from coins, inscriptions, motifs, patterns, teleological, religious or iconological theories to the style of objects; and uses the Bodh-Gaya railing sculptures, together with sculptures from other sites, to explain the entire evolution of early Buddhist Art in North India from the second century to the first century BC. In the process, it recapitulates and rectifies the nineteenth century archaeology of Cunningham, translates and critically interprets, for the first time, several seminal analyses in French by the twentieth century scholars like Coomaraswamy, Combaz, Hackin, Stern and Benisti; and retrieves from oblivion, the outstanding contribution of early Bodh-Gaya railing sculptures to the formation of the vocabulary of Indian Art.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR K.K. Chakraborty
Dr. Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty is a renowned art-historian with M.A. in History from Calcutta. University. M.P.A. in Public Administration and Ph.D. in Fine Art from Harvard University, U.S.A. He has lectured extensively in India and abroad. He has many publications to his credit including books on Orccha, Gwalior Fort. Khajuraho, Rock Art in India and the World, Dangwada excavation, the Indian Family. He has launched and edited important issues of the archaeological magazine Puratan. Some of his forthcoming publications are the Early Buddhist Art of Bodhgaya, Art of Daksina Kosala, articles in the Macmillan Dictionary of Art, London, an edited volume on Tribal Identity. He has chaired sessions in national and international seminars including World Archaeology Congress, World Ethnobiology Congress, Indian Science Congress. He is member of many expert committees and learned societies at the State, national and international level. A senior member of the Indian Administrative Service, he has specially concerned himself with development of museums and organization of excavation, conservation and non-invasive recycling of monuments, ecological monitoring of cultural and administrative initiatives throughout his eventful career. At present, he is Director, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (National Museum of Man) at Bhopal, promoting a multidisciplinary museum movement dedicated to the revitalization of dead, languishing, vanishing arts and crafts, ethnic identity, skills and knowledge.
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