Explore Uttar Pradesh
Ten kilometres north of Varanasi, the ruins and temples at SARNATH are a Buddhist pilgrimage centre, and also popular with day-trippers from Varanasi. It was here, around 530 BC, just five weeks after he had found enlightenment, that Buddha gave his first ever sermon. According to Buddhist belief, this set in motion the Dharmachakra (“Wheel of Law”), a new cycle of rebirths and reincarnations leading eventually to ultimate enlightenment for everybody. During the rainy season, when Buddha and his followers sought respite from their round of itinerant teaching, they would retire to Sarnath. Also known as Rishipatana, the place of the rishis, or Mrigadaya, the deer park, Sarnath’s name derives from Saranganatha, the Lord of the Deer.
Over the centuries, the settlement flourished as a centre of Buddhist (particularly Hinayana) art and teaching. Seventh-century Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zhang recounted seeing thirty monasteries, supporting some three thousand monks, and a life-sized brass statue of the Buddha turning the Wheel of Law, but Indian Buddhism floundered under the impact of Muslim invasions and the rise of Hinduism. Sarnath’s expanding Buddhist settlement eventually dissolved in the wake of this religious and political metamorphosis. Except for the Dhamekh Stupa, much of the site lay in ruins for almost a millennium, prey to vandalism and pilfering, until 1834, when Alexander Cunningham, head of the Archeological Survey, excavated the site. Today it is once more an important Buddhist centre, and its avenues house missions from all over the Buddhist world.
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The main site and the Dhamekh Stupa
The main site and the Dhamekh Stupa
Dominated by the huge bulk of the Dhamekh Stupa, the extensive archeological excavations of the main site of Sarnath are maintained within an immaculate park. Entering from the southwest, the pillaged remains of the Dharmarajika Stupa lie immediately to the north: within its core the stupa holds a green marble casket containing relics of Buddha (Ashoka gathered these up from seven original locations and redistributed among numerous stupas nationwide including this one) and precious objects, including decayed pearls and gold leaf. Commemorating the spot where the Buddha delivered his first sermon, Dharmarajika is attributed to the reign of Ashoka in the third century BC, but was extended a further six times.
Adjacent to Dharmarajika Stupa are the ruins of the main shrine, where Ashoka is said to have meditated. To the west stands the lower portion of an Ashoka Pillar – minus its famous capital, now housed in the museum. The ruins of four monasteries, dating from the third to the twelfth centuries, are also contained within the compound; all bear the same hallmark of a central courtyard surrounded by monastic cells.
The most impressive of the site’s remains is the Dhamekh Stupa, also known as the Dharma Chakra Stupa, which stakes a competing claim as the exact spot of Buddha’s first sermon. The stupa is composed of a cylindrical tower rising 33.5m from a stone drum, ornamented with bas-relief foliage and geometric patterns; the eight-arched niches halfway up may once have held statues of the Buddha.
