Ashoka commissions the Great Stupa at Sanchi
- Date
- c. 250 BCE
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- Madhya Pradesh, India
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Around the mid-3rd century BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka commissioned the original Great Stupa at Sanchi, in present-day Madhya Pradesh, marking one of the earliest surviving monuments of Buddhist architecture in India.
The original structure was a simple hemispherical dome of brick raised over relics of the Buddha, crowned by a chatra (parasol) symbolising rank and surrounded by a terrace and railing. Tradition links Ashoka's patronage of the site to his wife Devi, the daughter of a merchant of nearby Vidisha. The stupa formed part of Ashoka's broader program of redistributing Buddhist relics and erecting monuments across his empire following his embrace of Buddhism after the Kalinga War. In later centuries the monument was greatly enlarged and faced in stone under the Shunga dynasty (c. 150 BCE) and adorned with elaborately carved toranas (ceremonial gateways) under the Satavahanas, reaching its celebrated final form by around the 1st century CE.
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Empires active in c. 250 BCE
- Maurya Empire322 BCE – 185 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Odrysian Kingdom480 BCE – 46 CE
- Seleucid Empire312 BCE – 63 BCE
- Ptolemaic Kingdom305 BCE – 30 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
Related religion & ideology events
- The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greekc. 250 BCE
- Third Buddhist Council and Ashoka's Buddhist missionsc. 250 BCE
- Confucianism becomes Han state ideology; Imperial Academy foundedc. 136–124 BCE
- Enlightenment of the Buddha at Bodh Gayac. 528 BCE (traditional)
- Crucifixion of Jesus and the origins of Christianityc. 30 CE
- Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem70 CE
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Religion
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