Buddhist Stupas in South Asia

As one contributor to this volume, Robert Brown, sagely puts it, writing about stūpas in South Asia is “like writing about love: pretty much everything about it has been said, and all one can do is rephrase others' comments” (p. 78). Indeed, much ink has been spilled contemplating the meaning of these intriguing Buddhist structures. While this may be true of much of the art historical record, what has not been attempted to any large extent is an analysis of ancient stūpas as economic centers, as the subject of Buddhist literature, and in relation to the reconstruction of their archaeological contexts and the rise of urbanization in South Asia. The volume under review fills these gaps. It simultaneously provides a useful overview of scholarship on stūpas since colonial times, summarizing and evaluating earlier archaeological work (in some cases amounting to mere “treasure-hunting”; p. xvi) as well as recontextualizing past studies...