Buddha in your backyard, monuments on mountaintops

Across Jharkhand, fortunes in the foothills

In Hazaribagh, 110 km from Ranchi, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) identified three mounds last year as having possible links to Buddhism. One yielded a 900year-old shrine and two subsidiary structures, two metres below ground level. In January this year, digging into the second mound revealed another shrine and monks’ cells. The site’s six sandstone sculptures depicted a seated Buddha and five likenesses of Tara, depicted as the female Buddha in the tantric-influenced Vajrayana Buddhism.

Historians believe the area may have been a religious hub, a stop between Sarnath in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bodh Gaya in Bihar. But site security is a problem – two of the Buddha sculptures were stolen, and recovered by the police only a week later.

In UP, change underfoot

Workers building the Purvanchal Expressway in Mau district last year found a pocket of history along the way – a stone Buddha head, a hoard of coins, terracotta pieces and bricks that hadn’t seen the light of day since at least the 12th century CE.

The cache adds to the abundant evidence of the state’s Buddhist heritage. Scriptures mention the Buddha spending time in cities such as Sravasti and Saaketa. British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham’s surveys in the 1860s and 1890s, and AK Narayanan’s in the 1960s, corroborate the claims. The writings of Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang, who visited between 629 and 645 AD, record 3,000 monks and 100 monasteries in Ayodhya alone. Land-levelling work for the Ram temple in Ayodhya has revealed artefacts on-site too. Indian Buddhist groups have been petitioning the government to allocate a site for a vihara in Ayodhya too.

Gujarat’s season of plenty

In the past decade, archaeologists have unearthed a nunnery (India’s first record of a shelter for women monks) and metal workshops in the village of Vadnagar; a massive 23-chamber monastery and a cache of artefacts on the banks of Sharmishtha Lake; and a stupa, capped with burnt bricks and a chipped-stone entryway, at Taranga Hill.

Last year, Vadnagar discovered that its roots ran deeper. Excavations near a grain godown revealed a well-preserved semi-circular structure resembling a chaitya or prayer hall, and two stupas. All were built or repaired between the 2nd and 7th centuries CE – meaning that Hiuen Tsang, who mentioned 10 monasteries in Anandpura (the town’s old name), may have got it right.

In Bihar, the Buddha’s legacy continues

Buddhism’s heartland made news this January, when digs at the administrative centre of Lakhisarai yielded the region’s first hilltop monastery and more evidence that the lost city of Krimila lay underneath. Clay seals from the 8th or 9th century CE bore inscriptions pointing to a Mahayana monks’ council, but shows, startlingly, that the vihara might have had a significant population of women too. Text on a previously unearthed sculpture indicates the monastery may have been headed by a nun, Vijayshree Bhadra.

In Telhara, 100 km west, the remains of a university older than the 4th century CE Nalanda have been unearthed. One terracotta seal shows a chakra flanked by two deer and the university’s name. The government plans to open a museum there soon.

In Telangana, tall orders

Archaeologists digging at Phangiri in Suryapet in 2019 knew the area was once a bustling Buddhist site. What they didn’t know was that they’d unearth the biggest stucco statue in India there. The life-size Bodhisattva, made from a brick base and covered with sand, lime and other materials, stands alongside meditation cells, prayer halls, and sculptural panels with Brahmi inscriptions, that date from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. Later explorations have yielded coin caches, beads, iron objects and storage jars. The finds indicate that the complexes

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.

Excavations in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand (above left and right) have yielded 900year-old sculptures and monks’ cells. In Bihar’s Lakhisarai, digs revealed what might be the 9th century CE city of Krimila (left), previously known of only through ancient texts.