monks or priests could not have all died at the same time, it seems it was the custom as each distinguished member of a vihāra died and his body was cremated, to place the ashes in his water-pot covered by the food-bowl and to store them in some place in the vihāra until a sufficient number had accumulated to justify the expense of building a stūpa to enshrine them. It is clear from the orderly manner in which the pots were grouped together on the floor of one or more chambers of the stūpa that they were placed in that position before the dome of the stūpa was built. These monastic stūpas all had āyaka-platforms supporting pillars and they were plain brick and plaster structures like the Great Stūpa.
Among the sacred books of the Buddhists written in Pali, there is an important work called the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta or "The Book of the Great Decease”, and one of the earliest works of Pali literature. This book, as the title indicates, contains an account of the Mahāparinirvana, or final extinction of the Great Teacher. It describes in detail the last journey of the Master, and records the words spoken by him to his disciples shortly before his death. In this ancient Pali text, we find two sayings attributed to the Buddha which are important, as they appear to throw some light on the meaning of the āyaka-pillars and the object for which the stūpas were built. The Buddha addresses his favourite disciple Ananda in the following manner:—" There are four places which must be visited by the faithful:—His birth place, the spot where He attained the supreme truth, the site of His first sermon, and the place of His final extinction”. The other saying ascribed to the Buddha relates to the building of stūpas, and he tells his disciples that there are four kinds of people who are worthy of a stūpa, namely :-Buddhas, Pratyeka Buddhas, Arhats, and Chakravartins. This passage is in close agreement with the style of the stūpas discovered at Năgărjunakonda, as we have the Great Stupa consecrated to the Buddha, the Monastic Stūpas containing the remains of important divines or teachers, and Decorated Stūpas which may have been built to contain the re- mains of members of the local royal family. The inscriptions show that some of the Andhra kings followed Brahmanism, but there may have been many kings not mentioned in the inscriptions who were Buddhists, like their wives and other ladies of the royal household.
STÜPA 6 was originally a decorated monument similar to Stūpas 2 and 3, and is about 40 feet in diameter and seems to have been built to contain the relics of some person of considerable importance (Plate XV (6)). It is situated about three furlongs to the south-west of the Great Stūpa and stands away from the monastic sites. It was provided with the usual ayaka-platforms and pillars but in this instance, the base of the central pillar in each group was ornamented with a bas-relief sculpture portraying the Buddha preaching, or “ Turning the Wheel of the Law". The sculptures recovered from this site are all seriously damaged and more decayed than others. No inscriptions were found, but a small gold reliquary containing a tiny piece of bone, a very corroded and crushed silver casket, a few decayed pearl and coral beads, gold-leaf flowers, and two tiny gold medallions of classical appearance were recovered (Plate XVI (©) and (d)). The coin-like medallions are too thin to have been used as coins.
