Origin and Early History of Caityas

Summary

The article explores the origins of the term caitya and traces the early development of caitya worship. In Buddhist literature caitya is a generic term for sacred precincts including monasteries, trees, stupas, memorial stones and shrines. Drawing on the Vedic ritual of cayaṇa (piling up a sacrificial altar) and the root ci (“to collect or build”), the author argues that caitya originally referred to any structure or object consecrated by ritual piling. He cites passages from the Śatapatha and Taittirīya Samhitas where caitya denotes mounds erected over sacrificial posts and points out that caityas pre‑date Buddhism and were adopted by Hindus and Jains. Through a survey of early Buddhist texts he shows that the Buddha visited caityas associated with local deities and that early monks revered trees and stones at these sites. The author emphasises that the earliest caityas were not exclusively Buddhist but formed part of a wider pan‑Indian tradition of ancestor and deity worship. By examining derivations such as cittiya (Pali) and cit̩ʰiya (Prakrit) he argues that the word’s original connotation is “heaped up” or “piled”. He also analyses archaeological remains of prehistoric cairns and megalithic circles, linking them to later brick and stone caityas. The article concludes that the worship of caityas grew out of Vedic practices, that caityas were adopted by various religious communities and that only later did the term become associated primarily with Buddhist stupas and monasteries.