‘We’ve barely scratched the surface’
supported commerce and religion.
Odisha’s twist in the tale
Buddhism was the state religion when the Bhaumakara kings ruled Odisha between the 8th and 10th centuries CE. Many believe that this was the home of the Buddha’s first disciples. But a surprise emerged in 2018 in Angul district, 120 km from Bhubaneswar. Archaeologists found a monastery dating from the Shunga-kushan reign between 150 BCE and the 1st century CE. Bits of brick, sculptures, stupas and a sandstone pillar were found. The site is likely the monastery that is referenced in a copper plate found in the 19th century. Inscriptions mention a space for 200 devotees and habitation for monks and nuns.
In Jammu and Kashmir, they’ve barely begun
Modern monasteries dot the state. In 2000, in Ambaran on the banks of the Chenab, archaeologists unearthed an older Buddhist stupa. The site’s haul, dating from the 1st century BCE to the 4th-5th century CE, included monastery walls, idols and ornaments. One casket at the base of the stupa contained ashes, charred bone, coins and part of a tooth believed to be from a saint.
The site may have been a transit camp for pilgrims, and a spot from which the Buddha’s teachings were disseminated locally. In 2009, a cleanup of the site discovered the stupa’s foundation featured fire-baked bricks, designed as eight spokes, like the ones in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh — another indicator that it was built in the Kushan period. There has been no excavation since. of the Buddha,” says KTS Sarao, former head of Buddhist Studies at the University of Delhi and a former schoolmate of Coningham at Cambridge. “There’s no proof connecting it to the Buddha.”
He adds a further blow: The government of India does not permit foreign archaeologists to dig here. So some scholars may exaggerate foreign findings to make them sound as important as the sites they can’t access, he says.
Meanwhile, work continues in Nepal. Coningham’s excavations in the Tilaurakot region, where the Buddha was believed to have lived as Prince Siddhartha, have unearthed the remains of an 1,800-year-old palace complex and walled city. There are courtyards, a central pond and stupas. But still no concrete connection to the Buddha.
In Bangladesh, mango groves hide monuments
When a storm tore through the village of Dalijhara Dhibi in south-western Bangladesh in 1988, it uprooted rows of trees in a mango orchard. The owners decided to plant banana instead, but found they couldn’t. Under the soil was a thick layer of brick. Thirty years later, they tried to plant mango again, and that’s when they decided to examine the bricks more closely. They unearthed a brick structure. The regional archaeological department was brought in.
Three months of excavation later, the orchard yielded an unusual harvest: a 1,200year-old Buddhist monastic complex. Last year, continuing digs unearthed two temples and courtyards, and 18 residential cells. Fragments of ornamented bricks, terracotta plaques and clay pots show engravings of lotus flowers and geometric shapes.
There are other sites of note in the country. In Nateshwar in central Bangladesh, a 1,000-year-old temple was excavated in 2015. Researchers say the revered teacher and saint Atish Dipankar probably spent time there before his travels to Tibet and China. His life, like the Buddha’s, left no known material evidence. Perhaps that’s changing.
Growing up in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh, where the Buddha is said to have attained mahaparinirvana or left his earthly form, Sunita Dwivedi was fascinated by Buddhist history from an early age. She gave up a career in journalism in 1997 to make her way through Asia and Europe, exploring the ruins of hundreds of Buddhist establishments along the Silk Road. She has since authored four travelogues, published by Rupa — Buddhist Heritage Sites of India (2006); In Quest of the Buddha: A Journey on the Silk Road (2009); Buddha in Central Asia: A Travelogue (2014); and Buddha in Gandhara (2020). Her works have been published in cultural journals in India and China. Excerpts from an interview:
In Afghanistan, a global effort at preservation and restoration is on. There are projects to restore the giant Bamiyan Buddhas by reassembling the blasted rocks and adding new material to fill the gaps. Excavations in the area have unearthed ancient Buddhist cities and towns. Remains of stupas, cave paintings and carvings are being preserved. A motorable road now passes in front of the caves and through the villages of the Bamiyan and adjacent Kakrak and Foladi valleys to facilitate tourist inflow and restoration efforts.
Meanwhile, renowned archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi has been on a quest since 2003 to find a 1,000-ft-long Sleeping Buddha in Bamiyan, not far from where the Taliban destroyed gigantic Buddha idols 20 years ago. It is mentioned in the memoirs of the 7th century Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, and Tarzi is convinced it’s still there. If he finds it, he’ll have discovered the world’s largest Sleeping Buddha.
Pakistan is taking a surprising new interest in its Buddhist heritage too.
A couple of years ago, Pakistan unveiled the remains of a 1,700-year-old, 48-ft-long Sleeping Buddha at Haripur, possibly the oldest of its kind. Recent excavations have revealed Buddhist antiquities from the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE, putting villages on the world’s archaeological map. New excavations are expected to add to the glory of the Swat region.
Globally, in addition to the restoration of sites and new discovery projects, local site museums are being established and there are stricter prohibitions on illegal digs and trade in antiquities.
Which countries and Indian regions have you seen do a good job of preserving Buddhist relics?
Buddhist antiquities everywhere are treated as icons of world heritage. China leads in restoring and preserving ancient sites. Some of these are like open-air cave museums.
In India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, the richest storehouses of Buddhist statuary, art and manuscripts, little is on display. To see the breathtaking finds from South Asia, visit the museums in Mahasthangarh, Varendra, Comilla and Dhaka in Bangladesh; Lahore, Taxila and Peshawar in Pakistan; Kabul in Afghanistan; and Kolkata, Delhi and Mathura locally.
How are new archaeological finds helping us understand the spread of Buddhism from India to different parts of Asia?
Parts of the subcontinent that include present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan were part of a colossal commercial route. It’s surprising to note that the first stupas for relics were built not in India but in Afghanistan by two merchants from Balkh. The first fasting Buddha image is believed to have been carved in stone at Sikri, a small village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Connections show up in unexpected ways. Travelling along the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore to Peshawar and Mardan in Pakistan and through Kabul, Bamiyan, Mazar-i-sharif and Samangan in Afghanistan, I came across the remains of a vast number of monasteries. They had magnificent stupas, shrines, assembly halls, refectories, stupa courts and bath houses. It shows that Buddhist rulers not only patronised Buddhist institutions, but also set up monasteries and stupas and hired craftsmen to decorate them.
It was from these establishments that monks went on missionary activities to China, where they translated Buddhist canonical works into the Chinese around the 4th century CE. We haven’t joined all the dots
yet.