Despite the flourishing of Buddhism in the Āndhra region of Eastern Deccan between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE, our knowledge of the role of political power in facilitating its institutional development remains very fragmentary. This article surveys evidence of the involvement of rulers of the Sada dynasty (r. late 1st century BCE-late 1st century CE) in the establishment of monasteries and stūpas in the Krishna and Godavari river valleys. In particular, it discusses an exceptional relief on a coping stone from Amaravati stūpa preserved at the British Museum, whose accompanying inscription has thus far been neglected. A close reading of the iconography of this exceptional piece, in the light of the study of its inscription, shows how the visual narrative is highly relevant to the issue of royal patronage in Āndhra during the period of the Sada rule. Indeed, I argue that the relief showcases the royal establishment of the monastic complex of Rājagiri. In fact, members of the lineage stemming from this monastery played a very important role in the development of the Amaravati stūpa, and endeavored to stress, visually and epigraphically, their proximity to the royal power.

Vincent Tournier, Vincent Eltschinger, and Marta Sernesi (eds.). 2020. Archaeologies of the Written: Indian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies in Honour of Cristina Scherrer-Schaub. Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" (Series Minor, LXXXIX). Excavations of the Adhālaka Great Shrine (MIA adhālaka-mahācetiya) at Kanaganahalli, between 1993 and 1999, have uncovered a wealth of sculptural and epigraphic remains that undeniably make it one of the most significant discoveries for the history of Buddhism in India in the last decades. Since the publication in 2013 of the excavation report in the Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, the bibliography focusing on the site has steadily kept growing. With the edition of the Kanaganahalli inscriptions whose documentation was available to him, Oskar von Hinüber has laid the ground for a systematic study of their contents. The present remarks aim at addressing a point touched briefly upon by the editor, namely the monastic order or orders (nikāya) to which the Buddhist monks and nuns active at the site belonged. This issue is of crucial importance, not only as a means to reconstruct Kanaganahalli's place in the institutional landscape of early Buddhism, but also because this information may shed light on the scriptural traditions that were in circulation at the site. This paper presents an edition and detailed analysis of the two inscribed objects containing explicit mentions of monastic orders, as well as related material from the site and from the Krishna river basin. This investigation establishes that monastic members of the Kaurukulla nikāya (closely related to the Saṁmitīyas), as well as members of-or lay donors devoted to-the Mahāvinaseliya nikāya, were both present at and around the Adhālaka Great Shrine. These two lineages stemmed from opposite parts of the Sātavāhana domain, namely Lāṭa in present-day Gujarat and the region of Dhānyakaṭaka (mod. Amaravati) in Āndhra. Members of the Kaurukulla nikāya, in particular, seem to have played a prominent role in the renovation of the site in the 2nd century CE. This said, as is also suggested by the scrutiny of coeval record from Amaravati, the quest for a univocal "school affiliation" of monuments may conceal much of the complex religious, political, and economic dynamics at work in each individual context.