Sanchi

The Great Stupa at Sanchi in central India is one of the oldest surviving Buddhist monuments, begun under Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE and later enlarged. It's best known for its four elaborately carved gateways (toranas), covered in relief scenes from the Buddha's life and Jataka tales - told, notably, without a direct image of the Buddha himself, who is instead represented through symbols like the wheel, the empty throne, or footprints.

That symbolic, aniconic representation is the single most exam-relevant fact about Sanchi: it predates the tradition of sculpting the Buddha in human form, which makes it a useful reference point when contrasting early Indian Buddhist art against the later, image-based Buddhist art covered elsewhere in the syllabus, including Sri Lanka's own Buddha statue tradition.