Bhattiprolu Maha Stupa Archaeological Relic Deposit, Inscribed Reliquaries, and Epigraphic Attribution HIRR-2026-0026

Bhattiprolu, in the lower Krishna valley of present-day Andhra Pradesh, is one of the most important early Buddhist reliquary sites in southern India because its stupa yielded inscribed stone relic caskets during Alexander Rea’s 1892 excavations. Rea’s 1894 publication documents the excavation of the monument and the recovery of reliquary deposits, while Georg Bühler’s contemporaneous epigraphic study published ten inscriptions associated with the discovery, nine on three relic caskets and a tenth on a crystal object. The inscriptions are especially important because they explicitly connect the enshrinement activity with Buddha-sarira, while also preserving institutional and donor language and a royal name rendered in modern scholarship as Kubira/Kuberaka. This monograph reconstructs the archaeological context, reliquary evidence, epigraphic language, chronology, museum history, and evidential limits of the candidate record. It concludes that Bhattiprolu securely qualifies as a Tier A archaeologically recovered Buddhist relic deposit, while the exact biological identity, fragment count, and complete modern chain of custody require claim-specific documentation beyond the archaeological and epigraphic evidence. Keywords: Bhattiprolu; Buddhist relics; stupa; reliquary; Brahmi; Buddha-sarira; Alexander Rea; Georg Bühler; Kuberaka; Lower Krishna Valley.