Sanchi

The site

The hill carries several stupas, temples and monastery remains spanning some thirteen centuries. Stupa 1, the Great Stupa, was founded by Ashoka in the third century BCE as a brick mound, and enlarged in the second century BCE to roughly twice its size with a stone facing, a railing and a raised circumambulation path.

Stupa 2 and Stupa 3 stand nearby, the latter having contained relics identified by inscription as those of Sariputta and Moggallana, the Buddha's chief disciples.

The gateways

The four toranas, gateways at the cardinal points, were added in the first century BCE or CE, and they are what Sanchi is known for. Each consists of two pillars carrying three curved architraves, and every surface is carved — with Jataka stories, scenes from the Buddha's life, the Ashokan visit, processions, cities, forests, and a great deal of incidental detail of dress, architecture and daily life.

The carving is aniconic: the Buddha never appears in human form, indicated instead by a wheel, a tree, footprints, an empty throne or a parasol. The gateways are conventionally described as translating woodwork and ivory-carving technique into stone, and an inscription on the southern gateway records donation by the ivory-workers of Vidisha.

Donors

The inscriptions on the railings and gateways record hundreds of donors: monks, nuns, merchants, artisans, guilds and villagers, giving individually and in groups. Very few are royal.

This is among the most important bodies of evidence about who supported early Buddhism, and it substantially complicates the picture of a tradition sustained chiefly by kings.

Rediscovery

The site was overgrown and forgotten when a British officer recorded it in 1818. It suffered from amateur excavation and treasure-hunting through the nineteenth century before John Marshall undertook systematic conservation between 1912 and 1919. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989.