III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY
The Gateways of the Great Stupa at Sanchi
▶ Listen · narrated
Guilds carved these gates in the first century BCE and signed their donations in stone. The Buddha they honoured does not appear as a figure anywhere on them.
At a glance
- Location
- Sanchi Town, Madhya Pradesh, India
- Date
- 1st century BCE
- Material
- Sandstone
- Structure
- Four gateways (toranas) with balustrade
Look closer
Mortise-and-tenon joints carved in stone
The gateways are built as if they were wooden architecture translated into sandstone. The uprights and crossbeams meet with carved mortise-and-tenon joints, complete with the protruding ends you would see in timber construction. The brackets that support the architraves curve outward in forms that make sense in wood, where the grain can take the load, but require different engineering in stone. The carvers reproduced the joinery not because it was structurally necessary but because it declared what kind of object a torana was supposed to be.
The Buddha shown only by what he touched or sat upon
Across all four gateways, narrative scenes depict events from the Buddha's life and previous lives, but the Buddha himself does not appear as a human figure. He is represented by a pair of footprints, an empty throne, a riderless horse, a tree. This is aniconism: the deliberate choice not to depict the sacred figure directly. The convention was not unique to Sanchi, but it was consistent here, and it was not a failure of skill or imagination. The carvers could render crowds, animals, architecture and foliage in fine detail. The absence at the centre was a decision.
Yakshis leaning from the brackets
Female figures lean out from the brackets supporting the architraves, their bodies curved into the stone in poses that test its tensile strength. These are yakshis, nature spirits associated with fertility and abundance, borrowed from older Indian traditions and incorporated into the Buddhist complex. One well-known figure grasps a tree branch, her weight on one leg, the other bent and raised. The pose — tribhanga, or three-bend — became a standard in Indian sculpture, but here it also performs a structural function, distributing the visual weight of the bracket across the curve of the body.
The story
The Great Stupa at Sanchi was built in the third century BCE under the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, originally as a simple hemispherical brick structure enclosing relics of the Buddha. It was crowned with a chatra, a parasol form that signified honour and high rank. The site was personal to Ashoka: his wife Devi was born in Sanchi, the daughter of a merchant from nearby Vidisha, and the couple married here.
The four gateways were added later, in the first century BCE, along with a stone balustrade encircling the stupa. By that time the original brick hemisphere had been enlarged and faced in stone. The toranas were not built by imperial decree but through donations, often from guilds. Inscriptions on the gateways name the donors: ivory workers from Vidisha, a guild of artisans, individual subscribers whose occupations are sometimes recorded. The carvings were commissioned and funded by people who worked with their hands, and they signed their contributions in stone.
Each gateway consists of two pillars supporting three curved architraves, stacked and extending outward on both sides. The pillars and beams are covered in relief carvings: episodes from the Jataka tales, scenes from the Buddha's life, processions, battles, and images of the stupa itself being venerated. The density of the carving is notable. There are no plain surfaces. The stone is worked as if it were ivory — fine, intricate, and layered — which makes sense given that ivory carvers were among the donors.
The Buddha does not appear in any of these scenes as a human figure. Where the narrative requires his presence, the carvers substituted symbols: footprints to mark where he stood, a tree to indicate the site of his enlightenment, an empty throne, a riderless horse for his departure from the palace. This is not an early or primitive stage of Buddhist art. It is a sustained iconographic programme, and it was a choice. The tradition of aniconic representation was widespread in early Indian Buddhism, and at Sanchi it held consistently across all four gates.
The complex flourished for centuries. It remained an active site until the eleventh century, after which it was abandoned and eventually overgrown. The gateways survived, though not without damage, and were documented by British officers in the nineteenth century. The site was later restored, and the stupa with its four gateways is now one of the most studied examples of early Buddhist architecture in India.
Why it mattered then
The gateways were not royal commissions. They were funded by guilds and individuals, many of whom recorded their donations in inscriptions on the stone. This tells us something about who had access to religious patronage in first-century BCE India, and who wanted their participation remembered. The ivory workers' guild from Vidisha, for instance, paid for one of the gateways and made sure their contribution was noted. The carvings were not just devotional objects but also civic monuments, marking the presence and piety of specific communities. The choice not to depict the Buddha directly was not a technical limitation. The carvers demonstrated their ability to render human figures, animals, architecture and complex narratives in fine detail across the gates. The aniconism was doctrinal or conventional, reflecting a period in which the Buddha's physical form was considered either too sacred to depict or unnecessary to the communication of his teachings. The symbols — footprints, the Bodhi tree, the wheel — were sufficient and understood. The gateways show that this was not an absence but a presence differently conceived.
Why it matters now
The gateways at Sanchi are among the earliest large-scale narrative sculptures in India, and they established compositional and iconographic patterns that persisted for centuries. The yakshi figures, the use of architectural forms as frames for storytelling, the tribhanga pose — all became part of a visual language that later Indian sculpture drew upon. The decision to carve stone as if it were wood also marks a moment of material translation, when monumental religious architecture moved from perishable materials to permanent ones, carrying the forms of the older medium into the new. The aniconism is a reminder that religious art does not always aim for literal depiction. For several centuries, early Buddhists represented their central figure through absence and symbol, and the system worked. It communicated narratives, devotion and doctrine without a face. When anthropomorphic images of the Buddha did begin to appear, sometime around the first century CE, the earlier aniconic tradition did not disappear immediately. Both coexisted, and the choice between them was meaningful. Sanchi preserves the moment before that choice was made, or when the older convention still held authority. The site is now on Indian currency, the two-hundred-rupee note, a signal of its importance to national heritage. It remains one of the most visited Buddhist monuments in India, and one of the clearest records of what early Buddhist visual culture looked like when it was still working out how to show what mattered most.
The surprising detail
The inscriptions on the gateways do more than name donors. Some record the specific amounts given, and others note the donors' hometowns or professions. One inscription mentions the ivory workers of Vidisha, another names a single individual who contributed to the carving. These are not grand dedications by kings or aristocrats. They are records of collective and individual piety, carved into a monument that was built, in part, by subscription. The gateways were funded the way a community project might be funded, and the contributors wanted their names to remain.
What is disputed
The exact dates of the gateways are not firmly established beyond the first century BCE, and the sequence in which the four were built is uncertain. The identification of specific Jataka tales in some of the relief panels is also debated among scholars, as the iconography does not always correspond neatly to known texts. The reasons for the persistence of aniconism at Sanchi, and why it eventually gave way to anthropomorphic imagery elsewhere, remain matters of interpretation rather than documented fact.
Remember this
The Buddha is everywhere in the carvings at Sanchi, but never as a figure. His presence is marked by footprints, trees and empty thrones — a choice held for centuries.
Test yourself
Why would carving stone to look like wooden joinery be significant, rather than simply decorative or nostalgic?
Because it signals a moment of architectural translation. The gateways were built in stone, a material that was relatively new for monumental religious structures in India at this time, but they were designed according to the formal language of wooden architecture, which had been the dominant tradition. Reproducing mortise-and-tenon joints and timber brackets in stone was not structurally necessary — stone works differently under load — but it preserved the visual and symbolic identity of the gateway as a type. It suggests that the form of the torana, with its specific proportions and joinery, carried meaning that the builders wanted to retain even as they shifted to a more permanent material. The choice also demonstrates technical confidence: the carvers could translate complex wooden forms into stone with precision, which required both skill and an understanding of how the original structures worked.
Go deeper
Image: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0. Source.