68.Panel with devotees honoring the dharmacakra and nāgas protecting the relics at Rāmagrāma stūpa

  • 1st century BCE
  • Dhulikatta stūpa, Karimnagar district, Telangana
  • Amaravati Heritage Centre and Museum, Andhra Pradesh

This is a wonderfully direct and unencumbered scene of Buddhist devotion. Two male devotees worship the wheel, a metaphor for the power of the Buddha's teachings, the Dharma. The panel represents the veneration of the Buddha's corporeal relics retrieved from his cremation pyre. Divided into eight parts, one portion of the relics was interred in a stūpa at Ramagrama, where, following a flood, it came into the possession of the nāgas, or serpent deities, who guarded it fiercely. The representation of this legend, with the nāgas entwined protectively around the dome of the stūpa as here, was a favored visual narrative in the ancient Andhra territories