The Story of the Stupa

The commonest kind of ancient sepulchre found in Southern India and the Deccan is the tumulus, the prototype of the Buddhist stupa or tomb. These tumuli are low circular mounds of earth surrounded by a ring of big boulders firmly planted in the ground to keep the tumulus in position and to mark the sacred spot. The chief purpose for which stupas were erected by the Buddhists was to serve as monuments enclosing relics of the Buddha, or of Buddhist saints, which were placed in a reliquary enclosed in a stone coffer, over which the stupa was built. Through this book the author traces and studies the evolution of the Stūpa as a religious symbol.