The Sculptural Idiom of the Early Buddhist Deccan

This talk considers the early Buddhist site of Phanigiri—located along the interlacing Krishna and Godavari river systems in Deccan (south) India—and highlights the politics of patronage and networks of artistic production that buoyed the development of an extraordinary site which has yielded narrative reliefs and figural sculpture from the first to the fourth centuries CE. Through close attention to the stonework in and around the site, it will explain the development of early Buddhist art in the Deccan as fundamentally dependent upon material technologies and their mobilities. 

Kalyani Madhura Ramachandran is an art historian of South Asia with a focus on early Buddhist art and architecture. She has also written on colonial approaches to the stonework of premodern South Asia and on the sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s engagements with the sculpture of early India. Dr. Ramachandran previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has a PhD from Columbia University, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Shanghai.