Place · early historic site · India
Sanghol
The Punjab archaeological site at Sanghol in Fatehgarh Sahib district, Punjab — a 24-hectare Harappan to Mauryan-Kushan early historic settlement excavated by S.S. Talwar and R.S. Bisht of the Punjab Department of Cultural Affairs from 1968. The site documents a Harappan phase (c.2400-1900 BCE), a Painted Grey Ware phase (c.1200-800 BCE), and a Kushan-period monastic phase (1-3rd century CE) with a 56-piece Kushan stone sculpture hoard discovered in 1985 — one of the largest Kushan sculptural collections in Punjab. The Sanghol stupa complex and the Kushan-period Buddhist monastic cells document the northwestern plains between the Indus and Yamuna in the first centuries of the Common Era. ASI protection since 1968. The Sanghol Museum displays the stone sculpture hoard.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Tradition
- South Asian archaeology
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.790, 76.420
Connections (1)
- Monument relocationGandhāra
The hundred and seventeen carved railing pillars found buried at Sanghol are Mathura sandstone, carved in the Mathura workshops and carried four hundred kilometres north-west, and then deliberately hidden. They are the clearest evidence that Mathura supplied finished architectural sculpture across the whole Kushan north, from the Gangetic plain into Gandhara's zone of influence.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sanghol”. Epigraphia Indica and the Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy (Archaeological Survey of India).
Open Sanghol in the repository →