The Buddhist establishment on the hill of Sanchi at its height: the Great Stupa with its four gateways at the centre of a paved terrace, Ashoka’s pillar at its south gate, lesser stupas and the shrines of the Gupta age round it, square monasteries of cells on the terraces, and below, the village that fed the monks.
The Pāli scriptures give two rules that shaped every Buddhist monastery in India. When King Bimbisāra of Magadha looked for a place to give the Buddha, he reasoned that it must be neither too far from the town nor too near: easy to come and go for those who wished to hear the teaching, yet quiet by day and still at night, fit for solitude. And when the Buddha was dying he asked that his remains be treated like a universal king’s: burned, and the relics enshrined in a stupa where four roads meet, so that all who passed could honour them.
Sanchi keeps both. It stands on a low hill some eight kilometres from the old city of Vidisha: an easy walk for pilgrims and donors, far enough for quiet. On its summit the Great Stupa, begun under Ashoka in the third century BC and enlarged in the second, carries its relics under a solid dome; its railing opens by four carved gateways to the four quarters, turning the hilltop into the crossing of the world’s roads. Round it grew what the Vinaya allowed a monastery: square dwellings of cells round courts, halls for worship, and, over the centuries, dozens of small stupas raised for merit.
The buildings are placed as the excavations of Sir John Marshall found them; the Gupta shrine and the chaitya hall are shown restored. Click any building to see which rule it obeys.