Place · Buddhist stupa mound · Pakistan
Kahu-Jo-Darro, Mirpurkhas
The stupa that shows what Buddhist Sindh did without stone. Henry Cousens excavated the mound outside Mirpurkhas in 1909 and 1910 and found a brick stupa whose casing carried moulded terracotta panels of the seated Buddha, with a relic chamber holding gold leaf and a coin. Sindh is alluvial and has no schist, so the Gandharan repertoire of carved grey stone arrives here translated into fired clay — the same iconography pressed from moulds instead of cut. It is dated to roughly the fifth century.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.546, 69.009
Worth knowing
Because the terracotta was moulded rather than carved, identical Buddhas repeat around the drum — the first mass-produced religious image in the lower Indus.
Connections (2)
- TransmissionGandhāra
Kahu-Jo-Darro shows the Gandharan repertoire arriving in a province with no stone. Gandhara's workshops cut grey schist, quarried in the Swat and Peshawar valleys, into the narrative panels and standing Buddhas that make the style recognisable. Sindh is alluvium for hundreds of kilometres and has none, so when the same iconography reaches Mirpurkhas it is pressed from moulds in fired clay and applied to a brick drum. The figures are the Gandharan ones; because they are moulded rather than carved, they also repeat identically around the stupa.
- Site adjacencyBarbarikon / Banbhore
Buddhist Sindh is thinly attested and these are two of its firmest points, about two hundred kilometres apart on the lower Indus. Banbhore, the port, has yielded a stupa and Buddhist material alongside the mosque and the Hindu remains that make it one of the most layered sites in Pakistan. Kahu-Jo-Darro is a full stupa with its relic deposit intact. Together they indicate that the delta and the plain behind it held monastic establishments through the Kushan and Gupta centuries, which the Arab conquest accounts also imply.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kahu-Jo-Darro”. Henry Cousens, Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle, 1909–10; Sindh antiquities records.
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