ZEHANPORA (BARAMULLA): Excavations will begin Saturday on the second phase of Zehanpora, a Buddhist site in north Kashmir’s Baramulla. J&K chief secretary Atal Dullo will inaugurate the project.The presence of a 2,000-year-old Buddhist civilisation at the site was discovered last year by Mohamad Ajmal Shah, a professor at University of Kashmir. It gained prominence after PM Narendra Modi mentioned it during his monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat on Dec 28 last year.The Prime Minister recalled that people had noticed tall mounds in Zehanpora for years without knowing about their significance. What were first believed to be unusual rock formations were later found to resemble three Buddha stupas seen in photos in a French museum.According to Modi, the blurred photos, thousands of kilometres away, proved crucial as it showed three Buddhist stupas, helping archaeologists connect the dots and reconstruct Kashmir’s ancient past. The discovery reaffirms J&K’s rich cultural legacy.It all began in Oct 2023 when Shah was on a fellowship in France and came across the 100-odd old photos at Guimet Museum showing stupa domes in Baramulla. “I immediately realised I had visited the site. What struck me was the domes in the photos looked much larger than what we see now,” said Shah, attached to the varsity’s department of Central Asian Studies.Later, Shah requested J&K govt’s department of archaeology to fund the project and it agreed. Shah and his team started digging in Nov last year, initially discovering a hall identified as an apsidal (semi-circular) stupa.Shah and his team also found iron/copper artefacts, needles, decorated objects and other materials. “We identified wall alignments through drone images and excavated precisely at those points. There is a strong possibility that many structures and artefacts still lie preserved beneath the ground,” Shah said.Shah highlighted the possibility that the site was linked to the Fourth Buddhist Council (1st century CE). “Kashmir was a major centre of Buddhism in ancient times. It was here that Hinayana Buddhism evolved into Mahayana Buddhism, giving the religion a new philosophical and cultural form,” he said.
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Shah pointed out that the Chinese explorer Hiuen Tsang had mentioned Baramulla in his travel accounts. According to Shah, Tsang spent a night at Uskur, a Buddhist site near Baramulla town and visited several monasteries in the area. “This suggests Tsang must have visited the monastery at Zehanpora as well,” Shah said.
