Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past: Sculpture from the Buddhist Stupas of Andhra Pradesh, by Catherine Becker

Investigating how material remains and visual experiences shape and reveal core human concerns, Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past: Sculpture from the Buddhist Stūpas of Andhra Pradesh examines the production and use of Buddhist art in Andhra Pradesh, India, from the second and third centuries of the Common Era to the present. This book analyzes the adornment of Andhra’s ancient Buddhist sites, such as the main stūpa at Amarāvatī, with lavish limestone relief sculpture depicting scenes of devotion and lively Buddhist narratives. As many of these sites are now in disrepair, it might be tempting to view these monuments as ruins. However, this book, which also examines recent state-sponsored tourism campaigns and new devotional activities at Andhra’s Buddhist sites, reveals that these monuments are very much alive and even attributed with innate power and agency. Rather than suggest that ancient artistic production and devotional practices are linked in a conceptually uniform manner to the contemporary use of Buddhist images, Shifting Stones reveals intriguing parallels between ancient uses of imagery and the new social, political, and religious roles of these objects and spaces. While the precise functions that these monuments were expected to perform have now shifted, the belief that this art has the ability to effect spiritual and mental transformations in its viewers has remained consistent. This work argues that the efficacy of Buddhist art relies on the careful attentions of its makers to the formal properties of art and to the harnessing of the imaginative potential of the human sensorium.