In the Buddhist faith of all times, the stupa is venerated as Buddha himself. It is conceived as his nirmana-kaya “created body†or dharma-kaya “body of Lawâ€. In the course of history its structure has followed the evolution of the theological concept of the Buddha. When in Mahayana the supreme Buddha is endowed with multiple manifestations, such as the Five Jainas, Vairocana at the zenith,. Aksobhya in the east, Ratna-sambhava in the south, Amitabha in the west, Amoghasiddhi in the north, from whom emanate respectively five temporal Buddhas, there appears a new structural arrangement of the stupa with the adjunction of five pillars on projections in the cardinal points, to offer the worshippers signs of their presence around the supreme. This structure appears exclusively in the stupas of south Andhra from the 2nd century A.D., as a reflection of the rise of Mahayana in this region. When Vajrayana takes the lead and gives rise to Kalacakra in the 11th century, the style and icono
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mireille Benisti
Mireille Benisti (1909-1993) is a French indologist. She was trained by scholars such as Philippe Stern and Paul Mus who marked the first half of twentieth century, the first by his systematic method of style analysis in history of art, the second by his deep insights in the history of Buddhism and in the conceptions of religious monuments such as the stupa. In the same line, she has been the leading researcher and author in the second half of twentieth century in the fields of Buddhist art of India and the expansion of Indian art in Cambodia. Her contribution is basically in the domain of stylistics and extends also to iconography as well as to textual sources in Sanskrit. She has authored major books like “Relations between the first Khmer Art and Indian Artâ€, “Contribution to the study of the Indian Buddhist stupa: the minor stupas of Bodh-Gaya and Ratnagiriâ€. She has published a number of articles, on the stupa, on decorative motifs in Buddhist and Hindu art of Indian and Cambodia, on iconography in both areas, etc., leaving a rich harvest of facts, a model of method and a lot of innovative ideas.
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