The Buddhist Art of the Amaravati Stupa
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30 Oct
31 Oct
2025
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Buddhist Aesthetics
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Jaś Elsner
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Image: Amaravati: Art and Buddhism in Ancient India. Book cover. Image by Jaś Elsner.
The great chaitya of Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh, built between the third century BCE and the third century CE was the first Buddhist stupa discovered in modern times. This seminar series will use its surviving remains (perhaps 10% of its sculptures, but comprising more than 300 blocks) to examine different aspects of the stupa and its remarkable visual culture to explore art and Buddhism in ancient India.
Session I: The Monument: a phenomenology of its reconstruction
Session II: The Inscriptions: class, patronage and dana
Session III: Narrative and Buddhist meanings
Session IV: Art and the Iconographies of devotion
Duration -
October 30, 31, 2025
Timing: Lecture: 6:30 - 8:30 pm IST
Fees
Rs. 2,000 (For student discounts registrations kindly email info@jp-india.org)
Registrations will open on 19-Sep-2025
Jaś Elsner
Jaś Elsner is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College Oxford and Professor of Late Antique Art at Oxford. He is also Visiting Professor of Art and Religion at the University of Chicago and an external member of the Kusthistorisches Institut in Florence. He has been Senior Research Keeper at the British Museum in the past as well as lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. His work is on art and religion across Eurasia, with a special interest in pilgrimage and the textual description of art, His most recent book is Amaravati: Art and Buddhism in Ancient India (2024).