Torana

Also called: Gateway · Topic: Early Indian Art and Architecture: Stupas, Rock-cut Caves, Temples · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings"

Meaning

A torana is a carved stone gateway built into the railing of an early Buddhist stupa. There are four of them, one at each cardinal point (east, south, west and north), and worshippers came in through the eastern one.

Toranas matter because they were the main surface for early Buddhist sculpture. Their carvings told the Buddha's story in pictures to people who could not read.

Explanation

Background: why a stupa needed gateways

• A stupa (Sanskrit for "heap") is a solid mound that holds relics. Relics are the bodily remains of the Buddha or of monks, or objects they used. You walk around a stupa. You do not go inside it.
• A stone railing called the vedika went all round it. The vedika separated the sacred space from the secular world: holy inside, ordinary outside.
• The railing's design copies a bamboo or wooden fence, with upright posts, cross-bars and a top beam.
• Openings were needed in this fence so people could enter, and these openings became the toranas.
• At Bharhut, the stone railing had openings at the four cardinal points. It was put up in the 2nd century BCE [3].

Shape and parts (Sanchi model)

• Two square posts stand upright.
• A capital sits on top of each post. A capital is the carved top block of a pillar. At Sanchi these are carved with animals or dwarfs.
• The posts carry three curved cross-beams, called architraves (horizontal beams laid across the top of posts) [2].
• Every surface is richly carved: posts, capitals, beams and the brackets between them.
• The whole design comes from woodwork. Masons cut in stone what carpenters used to build in wood.

What the carvings show

Stories

• Jataka stories are tales of the Buddha's earlier lives, often with animals as the main characters.
• There are also scenes from the Buddha's own life.

Symbols in place of the Buddha's human figure

• Early art often showed the Buddha through symbols rather than as a man:
• an empty seat stands for his meditation
• a tree stands for enlightenment
• a wheel stands for the first sermon at Sarnath
• a stupa stands for his mahaparinibbana (passing away)

Popular motifs from outside Buddhism

• Elephants, horses, monkeys and cattle.
• The shalabhanjika, a woman hanging from a tree branch. She was a popular sign of good fortune and fertility.
• Gajalakshmi, the goddess shown with elephants sprinkling water on her.
• These show that the gateways drew in folk beliefs that ordinary people already held.

How it was used

• The worshipper entered by the eastern gateway.
• They then walked clockwise, keeping the mound on their right. This copies the sun's course across the sky. The ritual is called pradakshina (walking around a sacred object as an act of worship).
• People could circle at two levels: on the ground, and on the raised terrace (the medhi) [2].
• So the torana was the starting point of the ritual walk, not just a door.

Time, place and evidence

Bharhut (Satna district, Madhya Pradesh)

• The stupa was probably first built under Asoka.
• The Shungas (usually dated c. 185 BCE – 73 BCE) added the carved railings and the reliefs of the Buddha's life [3].
• Major General Alexander Cunningham found the site in 1873.
• During 1872–74 he recovered railings and one gateway. He sent them to the Indian Museum, Kolkata, where most of them still are. Some pieces are in the Municipal Museum, Allahabad (Prayagraj) [3][4].
• Loose Bharhut railing fragments, labelled Shunga period, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [5][6].

Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh)

• The Great Stupa was first built in brick. It was later enlarged and encased in stone.
• The four toranas were among the later additions. So were the circumambulatory paths (paths for walking around the stupa), staircases, harmika, yashti and chhatra [2].
• Sanchi has the best-preserved set of toranas.
• According to the NCERT, the rulers of Bhopal, Shahjehan Begum and Sultan Jehan Begum, gave money to preserve the site. European powers wanted to take away its eastern gateway, but in the end plaster-cast copies were made instead and the original stayed in place.
• Sanchi's Buddhist monuments are on the UNESCO World Heritage List [2][7].

Evidence

• The surviving gateways and railing pieces themselves.
• Their reliefs and short donor inscriptions, read alongside Buddhist texts such as the Jatakas.

Don't confuse with

• Vedika: this is the railing (fence) around the stupa. The torana is the gateway set into that railing.
• Harmika: this is the railed, balcony-like box on top of the dome, read as the abode of the gods. It is not a gateway at ground level.
• Gopuram: this is the tall gateway tower of a later South Indian (Dravida) temple. A torana is a low post-and-beam gateway of an early Buddhist stupa.
• Bharhut vs Sanchi: at Bharhut, Cunningham recovered one gateway, which is now in Kolkata [3][4]. Sanchi's four toranas still stand at the site [2].

Prelims Hooks

• Toranas = four gateways at the four cardinal points of a stupa.
• Ritual entry is by the eastern torana. The walk is clockwise, with the mound on the right (pradakshina).
• Sanchi torana = two square posts + animal or dwarf capitals + three curved architraves [2].
• The Shungas added the carved railings and reliefs at Bharhut. Its stone railing dates to the 2nd century BCE [3].
• Cunningham found Bharhut in 1873. Its railings and gateway are mostly in the Indian Museum, Kolkata [3][4].
• Trap: the toranas were not part of Sanchi's first brick stupa. They were later additions [2].

Mains Points

• Art for people who could not read.
• Toranas carried Jataka stories, Buddha symbols and folk motifs such as the shalabhanjika.
• So they taught Buddhism through pictures and also absorbed popular beliefs.

• This is good evidence that early Buddhism grew by reaching lay people.

• Continuity from wood to stone.

• The torana's posts and curved beams copy carpentry.

• This shows craft skills moving from wood into stone, a link to rock-cut caves that imitate wooden beams.

• Heritage and colonial archaeology.

• Bharhut's gateway was moved to Kolkata [3][4], and its fragments spread as far as New York [5][6].
• Sanchi's gateways stayed in place, with help from the Begums of Bhopal, and the site is now a UNESCO site [7].
• The two cases are a useful contrast for questions on preservation versus removal from context.

Related concepts

• Parts of a stupa
• Anda
• Harmika
• Yashti
• Chhatri
• Vedika
• Pradakshina
• Pradakshina patha

Read more

• Anatomy of the stupa