The Southern Gateway is the oldest of four surrounding the Great Stupa. It includes scenes of the Buddha's birth and also events from Ashoka's life as a Buddhist. Four lions atop each pillar support the architraves.

he entrances to the Great Stupa of Sanchi were originally planned and executed without the splendid gates that have come to be associated with it. The entrance gates form a striking contrast to the body of the stupa. Whereas the hemispherical dome of the stupa is composed of crudely-hewn stone courses, the gates are covered with reliefs and are very finely worked. In constructing the gateways or toranas the builders kept strictly to the wooden prototypes which are often depicted in the reliefs themselves. Each gateway consists of two square pillars crowned by a set of four lions, elephants or pot-bellied dwarves, supporting a superstructure of three curvilinear architraves and intermediate parts. The uppermost architraves of each were once crowned by a carving of the Wheel of Law. All but a portion of that on the Northern Gateway are missing.

The gateways all date from the first century BCE. The earliest to be built was the South gate, the principal entrance. This was followed successively by the North, East, and West gateways.

THE SUN WHEEL

With the addition of the four gateways which are offset from the original entrances to the circumambulatory path, the ground-plan of the stupa seems to "rotate" in a circular motion derived from solar symbolism -- either as the Wheel of Doctrine or as a sun wheel or swastika.

The wheel is a universal symbol of time, the turning evoking time's cyclic nature and the seemingly endless repetition of night and day and year after year. The spokes of the wheel create an image of the sun and, since the sun's passage through the sky marks out time, the two are related.

The ends of the swastika which constitute the four approaches to the lower path symbolize the course of the sun. The custom of circumambulation was closely connected with ancient solar cults, as is shown by the fact that the procession always begins in the east and follows the course of the sun southwards and then westwards. The number of uprights is presumably related to the division of the zodiac into twelve parts and to the division of the sun's course from horizon to horizon into twelve hour-angles.

The Buddha had, in his own words, set in motion "the wheel of doctrine." The roundness of the wheel became the basic form in Buddhist geometry. The supreme goal of the Buddhist is to escape from the cycle of earthly suffering . As they see it, all growth and decay is reflected in the circular form. To escape from the cycle means to be wafted away into the formless nirvana.

SYMBOLISM OF THE GATEWAYS

Gateways symbolize a sense of passing from one state to another, from one world to another, from the known to the unknown, from light to darkness. Gates open upon the mysterious, but they have a dynamic psychological quality for they not only indicate a threshold but invite us to cross it. It is an invitation to a voyage into the beyond.

The passage to which they invite us is more often than not, in the symbolic sense of the term, a passage from the realm of the profane to that of the sacred. This is embodied in the doorways of cathedrals, Hindu torana, the gateways of Khmer cities and temples, Japanese torii, etc.

The sacred space of the temple makes possible the passage from one level to another; first and foremost, the passage from Earth to Heaven. The temple is the place where communication is possible between this world and the other world, from the heights or from the depths, the world of the gods or the world of the dead. Communication between the cosmic planes comprises a rupture in the ontological order: the passage from one mode of being to another, the passage from a profane state to a sacred state or from Life to Death. An image of the three cosmic zones is imposed, generally: Heaven, Earth, Underworld; the communication between these three zones implies a break in the levels. The point of intersection between the three cosmic zones, the temple or the sacred city constituted by consequence a "center of the world," because it is through there that the axis of the Universe, the axis mundi, passes.

Gateways are often set in relation to the four points of the compass, giving access from these four directions to the center of the world.

The threshold of a door is a barrier and as well as a point of crossing. The door is a dual symbol for defense and entry. In Egypt figures of lions were often placed at the entrance to temples or the bolts were given leonine features in order to protect the temple from typhonic forces. Gates played a special role in the journey of the deceased through to the next world. There was actually a "Book of the Gates," which describes the path of the sun-god through the netherworld where doors guarded by fire-spitting serpents and other demons had to be breached. Symbolic significance was certainly also attributed to the doors of temples and those leading to tomb chambers. Inscriptions in most pyramids, in the access corridor between the antechamber and the tomb-chamber, allude to a "high gate" which was often described as the "Gate of Nut," i.e. the Gate of Heaven. The opening of the shrine doors during rituals was the symbolic opening of the gates of heaven.

The Eastern Gateway includes scenes of the Buddha's entry to nirvana on a pillar. Across the front of the middle architrave is the "great departure," where the Buddha (symbolized by a riderless horse) renounces the sensual life and sets out to find enlightenment. Maya's dream of an elephant standing on the moon, which she had when she conceived the Buddha, is also shown on one of the columns. The figure of a yakshi maiden, hanging below one of the architraves, is one of the best-known images of Sanchi.

The Northern Gateway, topped by an unfortunately broken wheel of law, is the best preserved of the gateways. It shows numerous scenes from the Buddha's life, both in his last incarnation and in earlier ones.

Scenes on the North Gate include a monkey offering a bowl of honey to the Buddha, whose presence is represented by a stupa. Elephants facing in four directions, support the archtraves above the columns, while horses with riders and more elephants fill the gaps between the architraves.

The Western Gateway, with its architraves supported by pot-bellied dwarves, has some of the most interesting scenes. The rear face of one of the pillars shows the Buddha undergoing the temptation of Mara, while demons flee and angels cheer his resistance. The top front architrave shows the Buddha in seven different incarnations, but since he could not, at the time, be represented directly, he appears three times as a stupa and four times as a bo tree.

All photos ©Roger Shepherd