After the Big Fail at Kanaganahalli, I reviewed the work I had in hand and thought the best place to restart would be at Buddhavanam, as I could be sure to get some good photographs from there. Indeed it was so, and much more than I could have thought, so it really compensated from the earlier failure.
Buddhavanam is a major project in Nagarjuna Sagar consisting at present of a Buddhist theme park. It also houses the second largest Goenka centre outside of Igatpuri; and there are plans for a University, a museum, a hospital and clinics and an international monastery. The whole area is over 270 acres.
For now, after many years work most of the theme park where people can at one and the same time experience the glories of ancient India, and learn about Buddhism, its teachings and its history is complete.
It is divided into several distinct sections: the Entrance Plaza, the Mahā Stūpa (a full size recreation of the Amarāvatī Mahā Stūpa), a park with copies of many stūpas from around the world, a park with statues illutrating the Life of the Buddha; another park with Jātaka Stories and a Railing area with something similar.
I haven’t completed work on the photographs of the latter, but I did get some photos of the Plaza, the Mahā Stūpa and the International stūpas, which can be seen via the link below, which also contain much more information. But also see the next section on the reliefs found on the Mahā Stūpa.
The drum of the stūpa has around 250 reliefs sculptures on it, which are divided into different subjects: Auspicious Reliefs, Narrative Reliefs, which retell the Life of the Buddha and the History of the Śāsana, and 8 large icon-type reliefs, fully 7ft square, which present major figures within Buddhist history.
The work on these reliefs was done by Hariprasad, a renowned modern sculptor from Hydrabad, his sons and their team of workers. They spent around 6 years working on the project, which is part of the revival of the Amarāvatī school of art at the site. Some of the reliefs were copied from exemplars found in Andhradeśa and elsewhere, but many are new realisations of known Buddhist themes and stories.
The drum reliefs are on the upper register, but there are also reliefs on the lower register, which I will present later, along with the photographs from the Jātaka Park. Stay tuned.
