An important inscription of King Ādityasena, the eighth ruler of the Later Gupta dynasty of Magadha, was found in the vicinity of the temple on Mandar Hill. The inscription describes how the king built a temple to Viṣṇu, while his wife, Konadēvī, built a tank, and his mother Mahādēvī Srīmatī built a religious college (*see Fleet). Though the inscription is not dated, we know Ādityasena was ruling in the year 672 CE, so the temple would have been constructed not long before this date.
Ādityasena’s temple was excavated in a field next to the village of Aphṣāḍ in Nawadah District, Bihar, by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) between 1973 and 1983, under the direction of Sita Ram Roy. A fifteen metre high, five-story, rectangular pyramidal brick structure was unearthed, with remnants of a shrine on the uppermost terrace. The lower three platforms had niches which contained stucco plaques flanked by stucco pilasters. The majority of niches were found empty and alternated between rectangular and keyhole-shaped. The plaques extant at the time of excavation belonged to the lowest tier and depicted scenes from the Rāmāyaṇa positioned in chronological order. The monument and stucco panels were photographed by the American Institute for Indian Studies (AIIS) in 1978. Importantly, some of the panels constitute the earliest discovered scenes depicting Bharata’s arrival with his entourage at Chitrakut.
Photographs: American Institute of Indian Studies.
Photographs: American Institute of Indian Studies.
Fast forward forty-one years. In February 2019 I visited Aphṣāḍ with Ravi Anand of the Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna, in order to see the Rāmāyaṇa images for myself. Sadly we found virtually the entirety of the brick facing of the monument lost (possibly re-used for house building) and the Rāmāyaṇa panels nowhere to be found. The modern path encircling the monument is built on a steep incline and my faint hope is that the part of the base platform with the stucco images was reburied by the ASI (I will be making enquiries shortly).
After giving me and Ravi a very warm welcome, several inhabitants of the picturesque village of Aphṣāḍ took us on a tour of the many small shrines where 7th-10th century black basalt and grey sandstone sculptures from the mound and surrounding fields, are kept – some under active worship.
*John F. Fleet, ‘Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and their Successors’, inCorpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Volume III, ed. by A.K. Narain (Varanasi: Indological Book House, 1970, 1st edn 1888), p. 207.
Addendum
I recently came across this fragmented chlorite sculpture from Aphṣāḍ in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art. It depicts Cakrapurusa, the personification of Viṣṇu’s weapon, the cakra (discus). This figure would have stood to the left of a statue of a standing Viṣṇu, probably beneath the god’s lower hand. Since this Cakrapurusa is 81 cm in height, the statue of Viṣṇu was likely life-size and probably the main icon of a temple.
Art of South Asia 