Sanchi (サーンチー)

Sanchi is a small village in Raisen district in central Madhya Pradesh in India, principally known as the location of the Great Stupa of Sanchi, one of the oldest and best-preserved Buddhist monuments in the world. The stupa was originally established by the emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE as a relic shrine of the historical Buddha, and it was enlarged from a brick mound to its present stone-faced form and provided with elaborately carved stone gateways (toranas) across the subsequent centuries through the first century BCE under the Shunga and early Satavahana dynasties. The Great Stupa is a hemispherical mound (anda) approximately 36 meters in diameter and 16 meters in height, faced with stone and surmounted by a square railing (harmika) and a triple ceremonial umbrella (chhatra), surrounded by a stone railing (vedika) and pierced by four monumental gateways (toranas) at the cardinal directions, each carved in extraordinary detail with scenes from the life of the Buddha (depicted in the early Buddhist convention through symbols rather than as a figural representation, with the Buddha indicated by an empty throne, footprints, a wheel, or the bodhi tree), from the jataka tales of his previous incarnations, and from the prevailing royal and religious iconography of the period. The carvings of the gateways are among the principal sources for the visual culture of pre-Gupta-period India. The surrounding hilltop complex includes subsidiary stupas including Stupa 2 and Stupa 3 (the latter containing relics of the Buddhist disciples Sariputra and Mahamoggallana), the foundations of monastic buildings, several pillar fragments, and a small Gupta-period temple of approximately the fifth century. The site was rediscovered by the British general Henry Taylor in 1818 after centuries of abandonment, and was conserved and partially restored by John Marshall in the 1910s under the British Archaeological Survey of India. The Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989. For Japanese printmaking Sanchi appears as one of the Indian Buddhist sites treated in the South Asian travel sheets of Yoshida Hiroshi from his 1930-1931 trip to India and surrounding countries. Yoshida's India series, of which the principal sheets treat Benares, Sanchi, Ajanta, the Taj Mahal at Agra, Darjeeling, and other northern Indian sites, represents one of the most extensive shin-hanga engagements with non-Japanese subjects, alongside his Egypt, Switzerland, and United States sheets. The Yoshida Sanchi sheet (commonly titled Sanchi Toba or similar) treats the Great Stupa under varied conditions and is among the most reproduced of his Indian compositions. The visual character of Sanchi in Yoshida's prints is built on the hemispherical mass of the great stupa against the surrounding plain and trees, the carved stone gateways with their dense relief catching slanted light, the small foreground figures of monks or pilgrims providing scale and human reference, and the diffused light of the central Indian setting. Yoshida's characteristic variant-impression practice produced versions of the Sanchi composition under different times of day and atmospheric conditions. The site is today managed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the village of Sanchi serves as the access point for the stupa complex, reached principally from Bhopal by train or road approximately fifty kilometers to the northeast.

Hanga catalogues 1 print depicting Sanchi (サーンチー), by 1 artist.

Hiroshi Yoshida is among the 1 artist who depicted Sanchi in our collection.