Giriyak Stupa

About

Perched amid the Rajgir Hills in the Nalanda district of Bihar, the Giriyak Stupa stands on the western bank of the Panchane River, across from the small village that shares its name. The structure carries two identities: its Buddhist designation as a stupa and its folk name, Jarasandha-ka-baithak, meaning the seat or throne of Jarasandha, the celebrated king of ancient Magadha said to be the son of King Brihadratha.

As it appears today, the monument takes the form of a cylindrical tower faced with brickwork, measuring roughly 8.5 metres across and 6.5 metres tall, set upon a square foundation approximately 4.4 metres high. When the structure was complete, perhaps fifteen centuries ago, a solid brick dome crowned the cylinder and a stone umbrella canopy, the ceremonial chattravali, rose above that, bringing the total height from foundation base to canopy tip to an estimated 16.7 metres. The decorative vocabulary of the masonry belongs clearly to the Gupta period, the fourth through sixth centuries CE, sharing an aesthetic kinship with the great Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya.

The surroundings deepen the site's layered sacred character. Ruins of a Gupta-era brick Buddhist Temple lie close by, and structural remnants from the Mauryan period, fourth to second century BCE, and the Pala period, eighth to twelfth century CE, are scattered across the same hillside, composing a quiet palimpsest of Buddhist presence spanning more than a millennium.

History

The Chinese pilgrim Faxian passed this hill around 400 CE without recording a stupa, but his fellow pilgrim Xuanzang described one here around 622 CE, leading Alexander Cunningham to date its construction to roughly 500 CE. Local legend holds that Buddhist monks raised the stupa over the body of a sacred goose, a tradition Cunningham found some support for when he unearthed a broken sculpture carved with a goose on its pedestal. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton noted a treasure hunter's tunnel at its base in 1811, and Cunningham's own 1870 excavation, a shaft sunk from the crown to the foundation, uncovered nothing further about its history. The Archaeological Survey of India restored the decayed cylindrical wall between 2011 and 2016 and sealed the old tunnel.

Significance

The stupa stands in the Rajgir Hills, a landscape where the Buddha himself is remembered to have kept several monsoon retreats, and its Gupta-period brickwork shares a family resemblance with the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya. For those who honour the epic memory of Magadha, its name keeps alive the throne of Jarasandha, giving this quiet hilltop a double resonance for pilgrims of two very different traditions.

Architecture

Gupta-period Buddhist stupa architecture; cylindrical brick tower on a square foundation, restored by the ASI 2011-2016