Place · ancient city · India
Agroha
The ancient urban and mercantile site at Agroha in Hisar district, Haryana — a 45-hectare archaeological mound with layered Harappan, Mauryan, Shunga, Kushan and Gupta phases. Agroha was the capital of the Agrawal mercantile community (traditional founder: Maharaja Agrasen, c.5-century BCE) and a major commercial centre on the upper Gangetic-Indus trade route. ASI excavations by Narasimhaiah 1978-82 documented brick structures, Kushan-Gupta coinage, and inscriptional evidence of the Agrawal commercial tradition. The 1980s Agroha Memorial Complex (built by the Agroha Vikas Trust) commemorates the mercantile heritage. The site helps fill the commercial geography between the Harappan northwest and the Mauryan-period upper Gangetic plain. Modern Agroha is 20 kilometres from Hisar; the Maharaja Agrasen Technical Education Society operates here.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Tradition
- South Asian archaeology
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 29.320, 75.920
Connections (1)
- Trade routeTakshashilā / Taxila
Agroha's hoard of punch-marked and Indo-Greek coins puts it squarely on the route between Taxila and the upper Ganges — the Uttarapatha — as a mercantile town rather than a capital. Most accounts of this period move directly from Taxila to Mathura, and places like this are the intervening commercial geography that made the road work.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Agroha”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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