Sanchi

01Ashoka’s stupa

Ashoka built the first brick stupa here in the 3rd century BCE and set up a polished sandstone pillar beside it, inscribed with his edict warning monks and nuns against splitting the sangha. Buddhist tradition in Lanka says his queen Devi was a merchant’s daughter of Vidisha and that their son Mahinda stayed at the hill near Vidisha before leaving for Lanka. In the 2nd century BCE the stupa was doubled in size and cased in stone, with a railing and a stone umbrella at the top.

02The gateways

The four toranas of the Great Stupa were carved in the 1st century BCE. They tell the Jatakas and the Buddha’s life without ever showing him in human form: he is a throne, a footprint, a Bodhi tree, a wheel. An inscription on the south gateway names Ananda, foreman of the artisans of the Satavahana king Siri Satakarni; another says one panel was carved by the ivory workers of Vidisha. The same craftsmen carved yakshis and elephants found at Hindu sites of the age.

03Found and returned

The monasteries declined after the 12th century and the hill was forgotten until General Henry Taylor came on it in 1818. Treasure hunters dug into the stupas in the decades after. In 1851 Alexander Cunningham and F.C. Maisey found in Stupa 3 the relic caskets of Sariputta and Mahamoggallana, the Buddha’s two chief disciples; they were taken to London and returned in 1952, when they were enshrined in the new Chetiyagiri Vihara. John Marshall restored the site between 1912 and 1919. UNESCO listed it in 1989.

The life of this place