Stupa at Nagarjunakonda

Nagarjunakonda is located in Palnad Taluk of the Guntur district, Andhra Prasedh in South India. It was a secluded valley about 23 sq km in area and was surrounded on three sides by a group of hills which were off shoots of the Nallamalai range. The river Krishna flowed in the northeast associated with the celebrated teacher Nagarjuna of second century CE.

A.H. Longhurst, the then superintendent of the A.S.I, conducted full scale excavation from 1927-31; most of the monuments at the site was constructed in third-fourth century CE. During the reign of the kings of the Ikshvaku dynasty remains of more than thirty Buddhist establishments were found.

The great Stupa is the oldest and most central sacred monument at Nagarjunakonda. Inscription date the Stupa around 246 CE but archaeologist believed that the Stupa could be older i.e. earlier to 246 CE The complex was built by Charntamula, and mother-in-law of the second king Virapurushadatta.

The great Stupa is one of the largest structures in the city of Vijayapuri. It has a diameter of 28m but its original height is not known as the upper part of the Stupa had been destroyed. The Stupa is made of bricks and its interior is not solid brick work but consist of a system of walls arranged in the form of a wheel, with a rim and spoke radiating from a central hub because of its large size, additional support was given by adding two further concentric ring around the central core. The design of concentric and radial walls forms three rows of cells in the interior of the Stupa (eight in the inner, sixteen each in the middle and outer). The external surface of the Stupa was coated with a plaster of lime. A.H.Longhurt in 1929 made a significant discovery of bone relics paled in a gold reliquary with a few gold flowers, pearls and pieces of garnet and crystal kept inside a silver casket in one of the outer most north-western cells. An inscription at the site states that this is the great Stupa of the blessed one, hence archaeologist infer that the bone relics are those of the Buddha.

Both the sets of Buddha’s bone relics found from Taxila and Nagarjunakonda were presented by the Director General A.S.I to the Mahabodhi Society in 1931 for their safe custody and veneration and thus enshrined within the newly constructed Mulagan Kuti Vihara at Sarnath, since corporeal relics of the Buddha are highly venerated by the Buddhists as they are seen as symbol of the Buddha’s presence.