Place · Kushan stupa · Pakistan

Mankiala stupa

Also known as Mankiala, Manikyala, Mankiala Stupa, Ventura stupa

Function

Sacred site & pilgrimage

Confidence

Mixed / layered — The place is documented; its associated historical or cultural record and its named tradition are distinct layers.

Location

33.500, 73.080

Worth knowing

Jean-Baptiste Ventura, a Neapolitan general in Ranjit Singh's service, opened it in 1830 and found relic caskets with Kushan and Roman coins, among the first stratified archaeology done anywhere in India — by a European mercenary in a Sikh army, forty years before the Archaeological Survey existed. The finds are in the British Museum.

Connections (2)

• Shared sacred geographyTakshashilā / Taxila

  Mankiala on the Grand Trunk road, Taxila and Namobuddha in Nepal all localise the same jataka: the Bodhisattva giving his body to a starving tigress. Ventura opened the Mankiala stupa in 1830 and found relic caskets with Kushan and Roman coins — among the first stratified archaeology done in India, by a Neapolitan general in Ranjit Singh's army forty years before the Survey existed.

• Shared sacred geographyNamobuddha

  Namobuddha, Mankiala and Taxila each mark the place the Bodhisattva gave his body to the tigress, and all three show it as local geography rather than as parable. Three countries now hold the site of one story, which is the ordinary condition of Buddhist sacred geography: the narrative attaches to whatever hill a community needs it to attach to.

On these journeys

• The Silk Road — Antioch to Chang’an, through India
• The north-west — Gandhara, the Indus and the Hindu Kush

Sources

Wikipedia, “Mankiala Stupa”. Ventura's 1830 excavation reported in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal; Alexander Cunningham's Archaeological Survey Reports, vol. II.

• Wikipedia — Mankiala stupa