The early Buddhist stūpa sites — Sāñcī, Bhārhut, Bodhgayā, Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Amarāvatī — were built by patrons who supported Buddhism. The sites are explicitly Buddhist religious centres. Their stone railings, gateways, and architectural sculpture are decorated with extensive iconographic material.
A striking proportion of that iconographic material is not specifically Buddhist. It is fertility-and-auspiciousness imagery: the Gajalakṣmī figure (the goddess later identified as Lakṣmī being asperged by two elephants), the mithuna couples (male-and-female pairs in various amorous configurations), the yakṣa and yakṣī figures, the lotus-and-vegetation patterns, the Lajjāgaurī figures (nude female figures with their legs apart, often with a lotus replacing the head). Samuel discusses this in Chapter 5.1
The iconography indicates something specific about early Buddhism's relationship with the broader religious-cultural environment: Buddhism did not reject the fertility-and-auspiciousness religious orientation that operated across Central Gangetic and broader Indic religious life. Buddhism incorporated this material into its own monumental sites. Buddhist sites were also fertility-and-auspiciousness sites.
Several specific patterns appear at the early Buddhist sites:
Gajalakṣmī iconography: the goddess (later identified as Lakṣmī) standing on or near a lotus, with two elephants pouring water over her from raised trunks. The iconography is fertility-and-prosperity-coded — water, lotus, female-figure, generative imagery.
Mithuna couples: male-and-female figures in amorous configuration, sometimes standing in pairs along railings, sometimes embracing, with restrained but unambiguous sexual content. The mithuna pattern appears widely from Bharhut (2nd c. BCE) through Nāgārjunakoṇḍa (3rd c. CE) and beyond into Hindu temple-architecture.
Yakṣa and yakṣī figures: large-scale individual figures along railings, often inscribed with names identifying specific yakṣa or yakṣī deities. The Bharhut railing is the most complete preserved example.
Lotus-and-vegetation patterns: extensive lotus imagery and vegetation patterns that signify fertility and abundance.
Lajjāgaurī figures: nude female figures with legs apart and lotus replacing the head. Earliest examples from 1st c. CE. The iconography is explicitly genital-fertility focused.
The cumulative effect is that early Buddhist sites operated as fertility-and-auspiciousness religious centres alongside their Buddhist-doctrinal function.
The fertility-and-auspiciousness iconography at Buddhist sites carries several implications:
Buddhism did not reject this material: the iconography is integrated into Buddhist architecture in ways that suggest official sanction, not toleration of inappropriate material that crept in.
Buddhist patrons and visitors expected it: the iconography would not have been included if patrons had objected. Patrons paid for the stone-work; what they paid for was what they wanted. They wanted fertility-and-auspiciousness imagery alongside Buddhist content.
Buddhism operated as fertility-and-auspiciousness religion in practice: regardless of what the doctrinal texts emphasized, the actual lived Buddhism of the early sites included substantial fertility-and-auspiciousness dimension.
The Two-Worlds Thesis is supported: the early Buddhist sites are largely Central Gangetic and broader. The fertility-and-auspiciousness orientation fits the Central Gangetic cultural pattern Samuel identifies. The iconography is evidence for the cultural location.
Tantric continuity is foreshadowed: the developed Tantric tradition's sexual and fertility iconography (Khajuraho, Konarak temples; Tantric ritual imagery) has antecedents in the early Buddhist site iconography. The aestheticization-of-sexual-imagery that later Hindu and Buddhist Tantric tradition develops is not a sudden invention; it builds on a long-running pattern visible at the early Buddhist sites.
Connects to Yakṣa-Yakṣī Cult — the broader cult of which the site iconography is part. Connects to Bharhut Stūpa Yakṣa Incorporation — the specific site evidence. Connects to Auspiciousness vs Purity Two Value Systems — the auspiciousness value system in operational iconographic form.
Sāñcī Stūpa 2 provides a clean case. The stūpa is one of the oldest at Sāñcī, dated to around the 2nd century BCE. Its railing iconography includes extensive Gajalakṣmī imagery, mithuna couples, yakṣa-yakṣī figures, lotus patterns. The iconography is largely fertility-and-auspiciousness in orientation.
Karlsson's systematic study of the Sāñcī iconography documents the patterns. The Gajalakṣmī figure on Stūpa 2 (Figure 5.4 in Samuel's book) is the iconography type that becomes standardized — goddess on lotus being asperged by two elephants — and that appears across multiple subsequent sites.
The case study point: at the earliest preserved Buddhist site, the fertility-and-auspiciousness iconographic content is already substantial. This is not late-period accretion to originally-pure Buddhism. It is from the beginning part of how Buddhist sites operated.
When you encounter description or analysis of an early Buddhist site, the iconography section is often understated in mainstream textual-Buddhist scholarship. Default questions:
What proportion of the site's iconography is specifically Buddhist (relic-mound, dharma-wheel, Buddha-figures, Jātaka scenes)? What proportion is fertility-and-auspiciousness (Gajalakṣmī, mithuna, yakṣa-yakṣī, lotus)?
How does the source treat the fertility-and-auspiciousness material? Acknowledged as central, dismissed as decorative-only, or marginalized?
What does the iconographic proportion tell you about how the site actually operated religiously?
Karlsson's Yakṣas and Yakṣiṇīs (1999) provides systematic iconographic analysis. Coomaraswamy's earlier work documented many examples. Recent scholarship (Karlsson, Rabe, Stone, Quintanilla) develops the iconographic-analysis tradition. The convergence: fertility-and-auspiciousness iconography is substantial and integrated at early Buddhist sites.
Some traditional-Buddhist scholarship has treated the iconography as marginal-decorative material that does not affect understanding of "real Buddhism." The Tier-1 disagreement: was the iconography operationally significant for early Buddhist religious life, or was it just decoration on otherwise-Buddhist sites?
The pattern of major institutional religion incorporating fertility-and-auspiciousness iconographic content has parallels across cultures.
The handshake to history identifies parallel cases. Christian European medieval churches with fertility-related imagery (sheela-na-gigs on Irish churches, fertility-coded saints' festivals, the persistence of pre-Christian seasonal fertility ritual in Christianized contexts); ancient Egyptian temple complex iconography including substantial fertility-and-prosperity content alongside cosmic-religious imagery; many other cases. The insight neither domain alone produces: major institutional religious traditions often retain substantial fertility-and-auspiciousness iconographic content even when their doctrinal-textual material does not particularly emphasize it; recognizing this in one case helps recognize it elsewhere.
The handshake to psychology addresses the persistent religious-affective resonance of fertility-and-auspiciousness imagery. The vault's psychology corpus on archetypal imagery and affective response can analyze. The insight: certain iconographic patterns (mother-figure, generative-water, lotus-and-vegetation) appear to have cross-cultural affective resonance that institutional religious traditions cannot entirely suppress; the resonance shapes what gets included in actual religious-architectural practice regardless of doctrinal emphasis.
Treating the fertility-and-auspiciousness iconography as merely-decorative reproduces the standard-story dismissal.
Treating it as primary content with Buddhist material as marginal overcorrects in the opposite direction.
The accurate picture: both Buddhist-doctrinal content and fertility-and-auspiciousness content operated together at the sites.
Strongest evidence: extensive systematic iconographic documentation from multiple early Buddhist sites; the patterns are robust and well-documented.
Open questions: How did the site-operators (monks, lay-patrons) actually interpret the iconography in religious-practical terms? Did Buddhist monks engage the fertility-and-auspiciousness material, or was it primarily lay-patron-oriented content?
Sharpest implication: When vault discussions reference early Buddhist material culture, the fertility-and-auspiciousness iconographic dimension should be visible alongside Buddhist-doctrinal content.
Generative questions: How does the early-Buddhist-site iconography inform analysis of the later Tantric tradition's iconographic-content development?