L'architecture bouddhique dans la vallée du Haut Indus : un essai de typologie des représentations rupestres de stūpa

Abstract

The rock carvings of the Upper Indus valley have now been published by the Academy of Heidelberg for more than 20 years (Forschungsstelle für Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften). Among those are about 1,300 petroglyphs representing stūpas. The stūpa and its image are widespread in space and time, thus the engravings of the Upper Indus valley can be compared to actual buildings (monumental or votive), sculptures (reliquary or reliefs) and paintings. A typology as well as a proposed chronology of the carvings is introduced here. The study shows that the stūpa engravings of the Upper Indus valley illustrate the morphology of the stūpa in not only North India (Gandhāra, Kashmir and the Western Himalayas) but also Central Asia from the 1st century B.C. to the 13th century A.D.