The period when the Magadha State expanded from the Nanda Dynasty to the Mauryan Dynasty in one stroke and established its hegemony over the whole of India was at the same time the period when India made its spectacular debut into world history.
At that time, foreign powers of Greek and Persian descent were pushing into the Indus River basin and clashing violently with the Indian powers. However, they were finally unable to advance their military boots into the Ganges River basin. It was the successive dynasties of Magadha that stopped them.
In 327 B.C., when Alexander the Great of Greece conquered the Gandhara region, which was then under the control of the Persians, and set his sights on the Ganges River basin, it was the Nanda Dynasty of Magadha that blocked his attempt. In fact, it seems that the two sides rarely engaged in battle. Still, it was undeniably the Nandas’ ability to make the Greek generals retreat with their overwhelming military presence.
Interestingly, the excavated Nanda dynasty punch-mark coins are inscribed with a wheel-like design, suggesting that they may have already symbolized the Suriya Chakra or the Buddha’s Dharma wheel or Vishnu’s Sudarshan Chakra during this period.
From the fact that many of the punch-mark coins excavated in the Magadha region from 600 BC to 200 BC have the wheel or sun-wheel-like designs, it may be inferred that the chakra symbol was already in some sort of the national emblem position beyond generations.
Next, in 305 B.C. when the Greek army of Seleucus Nicator attacked to regain control of the Indus Valley, it was Chandragupta the first of the Mauryan dynasty who repulsed them.
He then signed a peace treaty with Seleucus, exchanging envoys and gifts that greatly enhanced India’s prestige in the Mediterranean world. According to a legend, the future King Ashoka was descended from the Greek (or Persian) queen he accepted at this time.
Greek and Persian documents written at the time indicate that the mainstay of the Indian army had already shifted from the Ratha chariot to cavalry and elephant units. As the military importance of the Ratha chariot declined, the symbolic meaning of the wheel may have become more religious, shifting from military to sacred.
Then, with the arrival of the third Ashoka king of the Maurya dynasty, stone pillars and monuments featuring the Dharma Chakra, symbolizing rule by virtue, were erected over a wide area of the subcontinent. This led to the display and dissemination of the most advanced sculptural arts of the time, influenced by Persia and Greece, along with chakra symbols, throughout India.
The Lion Head of Ashoka Pillar, which has been adopted as the national emblem of the Republic of India, is now on display at the Sarnath Museum at the site of the excavation. Those who have seen it cannot help but be amazed at the advanced carving techniques of the time.
The lion’s mane and expression are so realistically rendered down to the hair wave. The mirror-polished surface, the beautifully proportioned 24-spoke wheel, and the graceful Persian-style lotus petals at the joint between the lion head and the pillars as well show the grace and pride of the Mauryan empire. King Ashoka is a pioneer of Indian art forms that had never existed before him.
The aesthetic impact of this work, along with the “Chakra prestige” of Buddha and Ashoka, must have swept across India and strongly inspired the people of each region. The seeds of this impact would eventually blossom into a profusion of Buddhist architectural art in various regions.
The first of these large flowers that we can see today is the famous Stupa of Sanchi.
Sanchi is located 46 km northeast of Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. The episode of King Ashoka’s building of a stupa here was an uncharacteristically cute one for him.
When he was a young Prince, Ashoka was appointed as the governor of Ujjain, then a prosperous city in western India. On his way to the new post, he met and fell in love with a beautiful merchant’s daughter in Vidisha, and they were married. A devout Buddhist, she eventually built a Buddhist temple on the hills of Sanchi, near her home town. Ashoka built a stupa on the site to commemorate the queen’s devotion, and over time it eventually grew into a major Buddhist centre in the region.
Starting with the relatively simple Ashoka Stupa, it took several hundred years from the Shunga to the Satavahana dynasties to complete the beautifully built structure surrounded by the railings and gates that can be seen today. In particular, it was during the Satavahana period that the beautiful gate towers called torana, which have become the centrepiece of the World Heritage List, were completed and early Buddhist art flourished in all its splendour. It was also the very root of all Indian religious art to the present day.
The tranas built on the east, west, north and south sides of the first stupa were outstanding in every way, including their degree of completion, size and state of preservation. Although Buddha statues had not yet appeared at this time, their surfaces were covered with exquisite carvings so elaborate as to overwhelm the beholder.
The Dharma Wheel, Stupa, and Bodhi Tree represent the Buddha himself. The Chhatra (umbrella), originally hung on a nobleman to symbolize his high status, is also used in the design to symbolize the presence of the Buddha. In addition, lotus flowers, a symbol of purity that transcends the mundane, a Chamara (a duster), to sweep away the dust of worldly desires, Dwarapala, the gatekeeper, and various other divine beasts, dwarfs, and even the prototype of Goddess Lakshmi, who later became the divine princess of Vishnu, can be seen there.
Many of these have since been incorporated into all Indian religions and continue to live on as universal religious motifs today.
Of particular importance here is the Lotus Flower, which, along with the Wheel, symbolizes holiness.
The lotus has been a special symbol of religious purity in India since ancient times because it emerges from the mud, produces pure and beautiful flowers, and its petals and leaves repel muddy water and are never stained with dirt.
At the same time, the root buried in the mud at the bottom of the water symbolizes worldly life, the stem rising up in the murky water symbolizes devotion to God, and the lotus flower blossoming in the air far away from the surface of the water, represents liberation or Moksha, the goal of meditation practice.
Perhaps this originates in a spiritual culture derived not from the Aryans, who came from the arid steppes, but from the indigenous Indians (going back to the Indus civilization), who were born in a land of predominantly wet monsoons. The Andhras, from whom the Satavahana dynasty originated, were also indigenous Dravidian people, called Dasuyu in the Vedas.
I have a personal episode regarding this lotus flower.
I mentioned this thought experiment in my previous article on the “chrysanthemum crest” of the Japanese imperial family. As I continued to travel around India and see various religious designs, one day I noticed the overlap between the lotus flower and the wheel (Chakra).
It was when I visited the ruins of a Hindu temple called Lepakshi. The geometric radiating pattern within the circular ring was engraved on the stone ceiling. The design could be seen as a slightly unusual lotus flower design if the eight radiations were seen as thin petals, or as a wheel, if they were seen as spokes.
In the centre of a lotus flower, there is an organ called the Receptacle, which contains and nurtures the seeds, and its presence is more conspicuous than that of an ordinary flower. I thought it corresponds to the axle of a wheel.
With a moment of confusion, as if I were looking at a trompe l’oeil painting, I thought to myself that if this was the design of the Sacred Lotus Wheel = Padma Chakra, formed by the overlapping of the Sacred Wheel and the Lotus Flower.
Upon examination, the eight-petals lotus flower medallion design was universally adopted in ancient Japan too. The following is one of the most easily recognizable designs. If you look at the joints between the petals as spokes, it looks like a wheel as well as a lotus flower, doesn’t it?
Regarding this “superposition” of the lotus flower and the wheel, there is an interesting phrase in the Shorter Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtra, which is said to have been established around the same time as the Satavahana dynasty. In describing the scene of Heaven, it is said that a pond symbolizing the Pure Land is blooming with “a lotus flower as great as a wheel“.
This expression is actually common to many other Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, such as the Lotus Sutra, and indicates the fact that the Indians of that time saw both the lotus flower and the wheel as sacred symbols superimposed on each other.
The second stupa at Sanchi, built by the Shunga dynasty in the second century B.C., was smaller and plainer than the first stupa. However, I was struck by the carvings on the entire surface of the surrounding railings. The circular decorations, called medallions in English, stood in marked contrast to the simple, unadorned stupa itself.
Then I realized that the central motif of the medallion is a beautiful lotus wheel, and this railing is the boundary that separates the sacred world from the secular world. The devotees must have passed right through this sanctified boundary and met the Buddha, who is the pure most and free from the pollution of everyday worldly life.
Here was its irrefutable evidence that the lotus medallion is a superimposition of the sacred wheel. If you look at the lotus medallion in the centre of the image below, you can see the obvious spoked wheel there.
In this figure, between the eight spokes, small round protrusions can be seen on the rim edges, a design typical of the Dharma Chakra of the time.
There is no doubt that the Lotus Wheel=Padma Chakra, which is a fusion of the Sacred Wheel and the Lotus Flower, had been adopted precisely as a sacred boundary symbol.
And in retrospect, these lotus chakras as boundaries were beautifully lined up everywhere, including on the underside of the trana of the first stupa.
The lotus wheel design left by the Shunga dynasty can be seen in the relics of Bharhut housed in the Indian Museum in Kolkata. Considering that Pushyamitra, who founded the Shunga dynasty, was a general of the Maurya dynasty, it is highly possible that the lotus wheel design had already emerged during or before the Maurya dynasty.
And here, too, was explicit evidence of the fusion of the wheel and lotus flower. In the image below, there is an obvious wheel in the centre, surrounded by lotus petals. This is the very image of “a lotus flower as great as a wheel” in full blossom”.
The wheel in the centre of this lotus wheel has too many spokes compared to wheels in common use. It may represent the afterimage of the wheel spinning, and also is an image reminiscent of the radiating fringe of the stamen in a lotus flower.
A wheel has a three-layered circular ring structure: the circular ring of the axle (hub), the radial circular ring of the spokes, and the circular ring of the rim (tire). In the case of a lotus flower, this corresponds to a three-layered structure: the circular ring of the receptacle, the radial circular ring of the stamens, and the radial circular ring of the petals. Of course, it is also possible to superimpose radially developing petals on the spokes, as illustrated in the previous example.
The radial design from the center of the lotus flower must have been based on the image of the radiant Surya=the sun. This can easily be seen in the golden stamens that radiate around the actual lotus flower’s receptacle.
This can be thought that the “sun,” the “axle of a wheel,” and the “receptacle of a lotus flower” were superimposed, and “the radiant light of the sun”, “the spokes of a wheel”, and “the stamens (or petals) of a lotus flower” were also superimposed.
The medallion of the lotus wheel may date back as far as the Indus civilization. This is because the same design as the Indus chakra letters discussed before is still widely used today as the simplest and most basic auspicious circle chakra design.
These circle symbols similar to the six-spoke wheel are universally found throughout India on the walls of temples, palaces, and ordinary houses, and are said to have the meaning of a spell to bring happiness, and also pray for no-entry of evil spirits. I believe this is probably one of the origins of the holy lotus wheel.
How have these various sacred chakra designs literally “blossomed” in the Indian world in a complex and intertwined manner? The next section will reveal more kaleidoscopic developments of that.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 