Bharhut

The stupa and its railing

The stupa itself is gone. What survives is a large part of its stone railing and one gateway, carved with medallions, panels and figures, and inscribed throughout.

The carving is earlier than Sanchi's gateways and stylistically distinct: flatter, more frontal, with figures arranged in shallow relief and a strong sense of the stone surface. Jataka scenes are shown in medallions, often with the story's name inscribed beside them — which makes Bharhut uniquely valuable, since the labels identify subjects that would otherwise be guessed at.

Inscriptions

The labelling is the site's peculiar contribution. Scenes are named, figures are named, and donors are recorded — again largely monks, nuns, merchants and ordinary people rather than kings.

The named Jatakas allow the sculpture to be matched against the surviving texts, and demonstrate that a substantial body of Jataka narrative was already fixed and widely known by the second century BCE. The yakshas and yakshis carved on the pillars are labelled too, which gives names to a class of figure otherwise anonymous.

Aniconism

As at Sanchi, the Buddha is not shown in human form. The convention is consistent enough at Bharhut to have been the principal evidence in the long argument over whether early Buddhism prohibited images or simply had not yet developed them.

Dispersal

The site was identified by Alexander Cunningham in 1873. Much of the railing was removed to the Indian Museum in Calcutta, where the principal pieces remain reassembled; other fragments are in museums in India and abroad, and some stone was taken by local builders before the site was recorded. Little remains in situ.