Monastery; Archaeology; Buddhism; Andhra Pradesh; India
摘要
Existing interpretations of the broader social role of Early Historic Period (c. 300 B.C.-A.D. 300) Buddhist monasteries in South Asia tend to emphasize two possibilities. The first is that Buddhist monasteries were centers for religious isolation. The second claims monasteries were actively engaged in fostering the development of long distance trade networks. This thesis is an argument for a third possibility--ritual engagement with local laity. I argue that these different possibilities are not only a debate between historians--they were tensions that existed within the monastic community at one Early Historic Period Buddhist monastery, Thotlakonda, in north coastal Andhra Pradesh, India. These tensions were manifested in the layout and organization of the monastery and in the larger landscape in which it was located.
