Bhattiprolu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bhattiprolu
Bhattiprolu
State - District(s)	Andhra Pradesh - Guntur
Coordinates	16.10° N 80.78° E
Area - Elevation	- 6 m
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Population - Density	-

Bhattiprolu is a small village in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh State in Southern India.

1 History
2 The Stupa
3 Geography
4 Transport
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

The original name of Bhattiprolu was Pratipalapura a flourishing Buddhist town in the ancient Sala kingdom that predated Andhra Satavahanas. From available inscriptional evidence, King Kubera was ruling over Bhattiprolu around 230 BCE, followed by the reign of Sala Kings. Bhattiprolu is well known for its Buddha stupa (Chinna Lanja dibba and Vikramarka kota dibba) built about 3rd-2nd century BCE. During excavations at Bhattiprolu there has been found linguistic evidence of a South Indian language that belongs to 3rd Century BCE, and the progenitor of Brahmi script, well known as Bhattiprolu script to historians. Merchants took the script to Southeast Asia where it parented the scripts of Mon, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Siam, Javanese and Balinese languages. Their similarities to Telugu script can be discerned even today.

[edit] The Stupa

Three mounds were discovered in Bhattiprolu in 1870. In 1892 when excavations were undertaken by Alexander Rea, three inscribed stone relic caskets containing crystal caskets, relics of Buddha and jewels were found. The stupa was found to be 40 meters in diameter with an additional basement of 2.4 meters wide running all around. The most significant discovery is the crystal relic casket of sarira dhatu of the Buddha from the central mass of the stupas. The Mahachaitya (great stupa) remains of a large pillared hall, a large group of ruined votive stupas with several images of Buddha, a stone receptacle containing copper vessel, which in turn, contained two more, a silver casket and with in it, a gold casket enclosing beads of bone and crystal were found.