Sanghol Ancient Siteਸੰਘੋਲ

Where is Sanghol, and why do archaeologists prize it?

Sanghol is a village on a high mound, Ucha Pind, meaning the high village, in the Khamano block of Fatehgarh Sahib district, on the Ludhiana to Chandigarh road about 40 kilometres from Chandigarh. Under its fields and houses lies one of the most rewarding archaeological sites in Punjab: a settlement whose remains run in layers from the late Harappan age, around 1700 to 1300 BC, through the Kushan centuries to the sixth century AD. Few places in the state let a visitor stand on four thousand years of continuous Punjabi history in a single field.

Layer upon layer of history

The oldest Sanghol belongs to the late Harappan world, and its pottery and copper objects match finds at Rupnagar, suggesting the villages of this region shared one cultural tradition as the Indus cities faded. Centuries later the mound was a living town of the Kushan age. Excavators found fire altars of the Kushan period, still holding ash and the carbonised remains of the grains, pulses, fruits and woods burned in yajna sacrifices, a list close to the sacred grains named in the Yajurveda, with exotic items such as ephedra, chilgoza pine nuts and sandalwood imported from far away. Coins and seals of the Huna kings Toramana and Mihirakula, rulers who came from Central Asia, show the town stayed connected to the routes across the northwest long after the Kushans.

The fire altars deserve a closer look, because they show how connected this town was. Inside them, archaeobotanists identified the burnt remains of rice, barley, wheat, mung, urad, lentils and sesame, the classic grains of Vedic sacrifice, alongside fruits and nuts that included dates, almonds, walnuts and raisins. The woods burned were just as telling: deodar and tamal from the Himalayas, costly sandalwood from the far south, none of them local to the Punjab plains. Two thousand years ago, Sanghol's priests were already drawing on trade routes that crossed the subcontinent.

The stupa and the treasure of 1985

Sanghol's fame rests on Buddhism. A stupa was excavated here in 1968, and in February 1985 the Directorate of Archaeology, Punjab, uncovered the site's great treasure beside it: 117 beautifully carved stone slabs, among them 69 pillars and 35 crossbars of a stupa railing, along with figures and figurines. Scholars identify the carving as Kushan work of the Mathura school, from the first and second centuries AD, and call the pieces among the finest examples of that art anywhere. The railing stones carry scenes from Buddhist mythology, and sculptures from Sanghol still travel abroad as special exhibits in museums around the world.

On the ground today, the excavated complex is known as the Dharmachakra Stupa. Its circular brick base and radiating walls survive at ground level, ringed by the foundations of votive stupas and the partially excavated cells of the monastery that served it. Walking the low red-brick plan, with the fields of the modern village around it, a visitor reads the site like a diagram: this is where Punjab's Buddhist centuries lie closest to the surface.

The Sanghol Museum

To keep the finds at home, the Punjab government opened the Sanghol Museum on 10 April 1990, as a unit of its Department of Cultural Affairs, Archaeology and Museums. More than 15,000 antiquities have been collected from the site: pottery, terracotta figurines in large numbers, seals and sealings, coins, ivory, beads and stone sculpture. The ground floor galleries arrange the smaller objects, while the celebrated stone sculptures fill the upper gallery, set out with maps, charts and photographs that walk the visitor through the site's long chronology. A Buddha head dated to the fourth century AD is among the prized pieces. The excavated site itself, with the brick remains of the stupa and its monastery, is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Visiting Sanghol

Sanghol makes an easy half-day trip: it stands just off the Ludhiana to Chandigarh highway, about 10 kilometres from Khamano town and within reach of Sirhind's railway junction. See the excavated stupa ground first, then the museum, where two hours is enough for the galleries. Pair it with Fatehgarh Sahib and Sirhind for a district day that travels from the Harappans to the martyrdoms of the Sikh era, all within a few kilometres of road.