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The Madhya Pradesh government has begun work on restoring Buddhist monuments linked to the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, starting with a fresh excavation at the Vaishya Tekri mound in Ujjain - the first there in about 90 years.
Vaishya Tekri, the largest stupa at the site, measures roughly 350 feet at its base and 100 feet in height, making it substantially larger than the Great Stupa at Sanchi, which is about 54 feet high.
The only earlier dig, by the Department of Archaeology of the erstwhile Gwalior State in 1938-39, recovered large bricks and punch-marked coins that led archaeologists to date the structures to the Mauryan period; it was abandoned after a gas leak left labourers unconscious.
Ashoka is believed to have served nearly a decade as viceroy of Avanti, headquartered at Ujjayini, after being sent there by his father Bindusara, and it was en route that he met Devi at Vidisha.
Historians have urged caution, noting that no Ashokan pillar or edict has been found at Ujjain and that the 1938-39 report is too old and too shaped by earlier assumptions to settle the question by itself.
The comparison point for Vaishya Tekri. Sanchi's Great Stupa, about 54 feet high, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989, and the ASI has proposed developing Ujjain's stupa in the same mould.
Where Ashoka met Devi on the route from Pataliputra to Ujjain; it also lies close to Sanchi, tying the two Buddhist landscapes of Madhya Pradesh together.
One of the sixteen mahajanapadas of the sixth century BCE, with Ujjayini as its capital; it was later absorbed into the Magadhan and then the Mauryan empire.
Indian astronomers reckoned the prime meridian of longitude through Ujjain, which is why the city recurs in the history of Indian astronomy alongside its Buddhist and Shaiva associations.
The 7th century Chinese pilgrim whose account is one of the few textual anchors for the Ujjain stupas, as it is for many early Indian Buddhist sites.
GS Paper I > Indian Heritage and Culture > Ancient India, Mauryan Empire and Buddhist Architecture
General Awareness > Ancient Indian History
A hemispherical funerary or reliquary mound, the central architectural form of early Buddhism.
The earliest Indian coinage, silver and copper pieces stamped with symbols, in wide circulation during the Mauryan period; their recovery is used to date sites.
Prince; in Ashokan edicts, the term for a royal prince posted as viceroy over a provincial capital such as Ujjain or Taxila.
A local term for a mound or small hill, used for the archaeological mounds at the Ujjain site.
One of the sixteen large states of sixth century BCE north India; Avanti, with its capital at Ujjayini, was among them.