Great Stupa, Sanchi
Interesting facts
- The first known written account of Sanchi in English came in 1818 from General Henry Taylor of the Bengal Cavalry, who found the site abandoned and overgrown.
- Standing on a hill, Sanchi escaped the destruction that struck the nearby city of Vidisha, only about 8 km away.
- In 1822 Sir Herbert Maddock clumsily dug a breach into the Great Stupa in search of its centre, but gave up before reaching it.
- France asked for permission to take the Eastern Gateway home, and Britain wanted it for a museum; in the end only plaster casts left India.
- The Begums of Bhopal, Shah Jahan Begum and then Sultan Jahan Begum, paid for the preservation of the site before John Marshall's restoration.
- When the Southern Gateway was re-erected, two of its lintels seem to have been put back reversed, so their finest carvings now face the stupa.
- An inscription on the Southern Gateway names Anamda, foreman of the artisans of the Satavahana king Siri-Satakani, which helped date the gateways.
- Three inscriptions record Greek donors, the clearest reading "Gift of the Yona of Setapatha", a city whose location is still uncertain.
- A Northern Gateway relief shows foreigners in Greek-style tunics and capes playing a double flute and long carnyx-like horns.
- Ashoka's pillar here stood about 42 feet tall and was cut from sandstone quarried at Chunar, several hundred miles away.
Why it is worth it
The Great Stupa at Sanchi is one of the oldest stone buildings in India and among the finest works of early Buddhist art anywhere. Its core goes back to the third century BCE, when the Mauryan emperor Ashoka raised a simple hemispherical mound of brick over relics of the Buddha on this hilltop in central India. Ashoka's wife Devi is said to have been a merchant's daughter from nearby Vidisha. A pillar of finely polished sandstone, one of the Pillars of Ashoka, was also erected beside the main gateway.
Under the Shunga dynasty, the mound was roughly doubled in size and encased in stone, giving it the form that survives today: a solid dome about 36.6 metres across and some 16.5 metres high, set on a raised terrace and crowned by a railing and a stone parasol, a symbol of rank and honour. The monument is massive, plain and calm — its beauty lies in its geometry, and in what was added around it.
That addition is the four gateways, or toranas, built in the first century BCE, under the patronage of the Satavahanas, at the cardinal points of a stone balustrade. Every surface of their posts and curving crossbeams is carved: scenes from the life of the Buddha, stories of his previous lives from the Jatakas, the War of the Relics, Ashoka's efforts to spread the faith, miracles and crowds of devotees. One inscription records that the work was done by the ivory carvers of Vidisha, which explains the extraordinary delicacy of the relief. The Buddha himself never appears in human form; he is present only through symbols — his footprints, the horse on which he left his father's home, a canopy beneath the Bodhi tree. On the northern gateway the capitals are flanked by a dancing yakshi, a voluptuous tree spirit leaning out from the bracket, one of the most celebrated figures in Indian sculpture.
The Great Stupa is the centrepiece of a hill crowded with smaller stupas, monasteries, temples and pillars; together they were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989 as the Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi. Walk slowly around each gateway: the stories run from panel to panel and reward close attention.
Getting there
Sanchi lies in Madhya Pradesh, about 9 km from the town of Vidisha and some 46 km north-east of the state capital, Bhopal. The nearest airport is Raja Bhoj International Airport (BHO) at Bhopal, about 46 km away. The site is reached by road from Bhopal or Vidisha.
On these lists
23.47922, 77.73968per Wikidata