Sanchi Stupa

The Sanchi Stupa is a complex of Buddhist monuments on a hilltop at Sanchi, in Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh in central India, about 46 kilometres north-east of Bhopal. Its centrepiece, the Great Stupa, was begun in the third century BCE on the orders of the emperor Ashoka and ranks among the earliest stone buildings in India. Enlarged and adorned over the following centuries, above all with four richly carved gateways, Sanchi is probably the most complete surviving group of early Buddhist monuments in the country and a key record of the growth of Indian art and architecture.

Ashoka of the Maurya Empire had the first stupa raised as a brick dome over relics of the Buddha, topped by a stone parasol, the chatra, a symbol of high rank. It was only about half the diameter of the present monument. Beside it he set up one of his polished sandstone pillars, about 13 metres tall and crowned with four lions, carved from stone quarried at Chunar hundreds of kilometres away; its damaged inscription warns monks against splitting the Buddhist community. One version of Sri Lanka's Buddhist chronicle, the Mahavamsa, links Ashoka personally to the area, saying that as a young viceroy he married Devi, the daughter of a banker from nearby Vidisha, and that their son Mahendra visited her here before leading a mission to Sri Lanka.

In the second century BCE the stupa seems to have been damaged. Some scholars connect this with the rise of Pushyamitra, founder of the Shunga Empire, suggesting that he destroyed it and his son Agnimitra rebuilt it, though this is uncertain. Donations recorded at Sanchi in this period came from private individuals and groups rather than kings. The brick core was encased in stone, the dome roughly doubled in size, and a raised walkway and ground-level railing were added. Stupas No. 2 and No. 3 were built at this time; No. 3 is said to have held relics of the Buddha's disciples Sariputra and Mahamoggallana. The carvings on Stupa No. 2, from around 115 BCE, are among the earliest extensive Buddhist reliefs anywhere, and mason's marks in Kharoshthi script suggest craftsmen from Gandhara in the north-west.

The great gateways, or toranas, came next. After the Satavahana dynasty took eastern Malwa from the Shungas, the four gateways of the Great Stupa were built, from around 50 BCE into the first century CE. An inscription names the artisans of King Satakarni, usually identified as Satakarni II, as donors of one architrave, and another credits the ivory carvers of Vidisha with a relief. Carved like woodwork, the gateways crowd scenes from the Buddha's life and earlier lives together with everyday life, while the Buddha himself appears only through symbols such as a horse, footprints or a tree.

The region passed to the Western Satraps in the second century CE and, apart from a probable spell of renewed Satavahana rule, stayed under them into the fourth. Then came the Gupta Empire: an inscription of Chandragupta II from the early fifth century is carved on the railing beside the eastern gateway, and Temple 17, a small flat-roofed shrine of the same era, is an early example of a free-standing temple. Building continued and the hill seems to have stayed in use until around the eleventh or twelfth century, as Buddhism declined in India.

When the British officer Henry Taylor recorded the site in 1818 it lay abandoned. Sir Herbert Maddock dug into the Great Stupa without success in 1822, and Alexander Cunningham and Frederick Charles Maisey surveyed and excavated it in 1851, carrying relics to Britain. Treasure hunters damaged the site until proper restoration began in 1881. The French and British both considered removing the eastern gateway, but settled for plaster casts, and the monuments stayed in the princely state of Bhopal, whose rulers Shahjehan Begum and Sultan Jehan Begum paid for their care. John Marshall supervised a full restoration from 1912 to 1919.

Relics of Sariputra and Mahamoggallana, after a period in a London museum and a celebrated display in Sri Lanka in 1947, were enshrined in the new Chetiyagiri Vihara at Sanchi in 1952. About fifty monuments survive on the hill. UNESCO inscribed them as a World Heritage site in 1989, and since 2017 the Great Stupa has appeared on the Indian 200-rupee note.