Stupas

While I was gathering information about Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, I kept running into papers about stupas, the great brick monuments built to honor the Buddha beginning in the 3rd century BC.

Stupas are by definition man-made temples, defined as religious structures built completely by people and lacking domestic artifacts that would suggest other uses. Interestingly, one of those recent papers I picked up suggested that that definition doesn't exactly fit stupas, or many other structures considered "temples" by archaeologists for that matter. Stupas were not considered religious structures for a period of several centuries between the fall of Anuradhapura and the 20th century or so.

• Read more about the stupa, with particular emphasis on Sri Lanka.
• Anuradhapura