The ancient Paharpur Stupa belonged to the Vajrayana sect of Buddhism, now an extinct sect. Vajrayana or Diamond Vehicle was a tantric or esoteric sect. It was an offshoot of the Mahayana Buddhism. The huge tantric stupa stands in the middle of the inner courtyard of the Paharpur Mahavihara - the Great Monastery of Paharpur. The Mahavihara, a world heritage, is the largest Buddhist Monastery in the world in terms of acreage. The Mahavihara, along with its stupa, was built with baked bricks laid in mud mortar in between the years of 770-810 AD. Every part of the colossal and intricate Paharpur Stupa symbolizes one or the other of the Buddhist concepts about the life and the universe. The three-tier Paharpur Stupa also contains a temple in it. Thus it can be said that it is a stupa-temple. Now a ruin, still it stands about 23 meters tall on the ground.

A close analysis of the architecture of the stupa—a Buddhist symbolic form that is found throughout South, Southeast, and East Asia. The author, who trained as an architect, examines both the physical and metaphysical levels of these buildings, which derive their meaning and significance from Buddhist and Brahmanist influences.

In his preface to The Symbolism of the Stupa Prof. Craig Reynolds writes "The stupa is a symbolic form that pullulates throghout south southeast and East Asia. In its Indian manifestations it is an extreme case in terms of architectural function: it has no usable has a basic simplicity. In this state of the art studt Adrian Snodrass reads the stupa as a cultural artifact. The mounment concretizes metaphysical principles and generates multivalent meanings in ways that can be articulated with lite