OCCASIONAL PUBLICATION 86

The region discussed is that of the middle Ganga valley: the area south of the river Ganga in the present day state of Bihar.1 The temples and temple sites referred to are those built from the 8th to the 14th centuries. [...] Current historiographical stance tends to view the region as the original Buddhist homeland, its history framed by the succession of dynasties: the Mauryas, the Sungas, the Guptas, the Pala, the Senas and so on. [...] The largest number of these images can be dated from the period between the 9th and the 12th centuries, and the oldest image in my data is dated between the 5th and 8th centuries. [...] On the basis of sculptural and architectural remains, the temples can be dated between the 9th and 12th centuries which was also the period when the Nalanda monastery had a new spate of life under the patronage of the Pala rulers, and close connections developed between the Buddhist monasteries of Bihar, Tibet and other Himalayan Kingdoms. [...] The ‘universal’ tag limits the scope of the site, and seems like a repetition of similar listing and documentation undertaken by the East India Company in the late 18th century when sites and sculptures were classified on the basis of religion or as religious and non-religious, thus freezing them at the moment of construction and ignoring patterns of their long term usage.