Excavations To Begin In Bihar Village On Ancient Bodh Gaya-Sarnath Buddhist Pilgrimage Route

By Dev Raj

Patna: A village where for decades, residents have been pilfering the numerous Buddhist antiquities and bricks from ancient walls that lay scattered, is now going to be excavated by archaeologists. The digging is expected to start later this month under the supervision of experts.

Located around 30 km southwest of Bodh Gaya, village Dubba in Gaya district had been yielding stone idols and other objects for a long time. Information about the findings, many of which simply disappeared, spread by word of mouth, till a team from the Ancient Indian and Asian Studies Department of Magadh University decided to pay a visit, around a year ago.

“We were in for a surprise beyond our imagination. Stone idols, pillars, votive stupas, structures of huge buildings that could be Buddhist temples, monasteries, stupas could be seen everywhere. A large number of antiquities were scattered here and there. They all seemed to be of the era from the 6th century BC to the 10th century AD,” Shanker Sharma, assistant professor and member of the exploration team, told ETV Bharat.

Dubba, which is spread across eight acres, is associated with ancient sage Durvasa and Lord Buddha, who is claimed to have stopped here for a while en route to Sarnath near Varanasi after achieving enlightenment. Ancient Chinese monk and traveller Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang) also visited this site during his India visit.

Several statues of the Buddha and others are either placed in local Hindu temples or in homes of people who worship them as Hindu deities. Bricks found in the remains resemble ones present in ancient Magadh.

“Unfortunately, local people are destroying the site by taking away soil and bricks from the mounds. The antiquities found in the process are either taken home or just left around. The government middle school in the village was built on a mound in 1962, causing destruction of a huge Buddhist monastery buried under it. The entire school building was constructed over the remains of an ancient monastery,” said Sharma, who previously worked as an assistant superintendent with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Incidentally, some of the antiquities that survived the construction work, are kept within the school premises. Although Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and state archaeology department officials visited Dubba in 2013-14, their assurances regarding the conservation and excavation of the site did not make any headway.

After preliminary exploration, the Magadh University team applied to the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology (CABA) for an excavation license, which was granted in February this year, for a period of one year.

CABA, established in 1945, is a Union government body to promote collaboration between ASI, state governments, universities and research institutions. The board includes experts and is chaired by the Union Minister of Culture.

“We are currently in the process of completing administrative formalities to set up an excavation camp at Dubba. We intend to start digging soon. The village is located on the ancient Buddhist pilgrimage route from Bodh Gaya to Sarnath, and was also close to the Uttarapatha – the ancient trade route that connected Tamralipti in present-day West Bengal, to Gandhara in present-day Afghanistan,” said Sharma.

While Sharma will function as the director for the excavation, Alka Mishra, the head of the department of Ancient Indian and Asian Studies at the Magadh University, will serve as the co-director. Other faculty members who will be part of the team are Janmejay Singh, Alok Ranjan, Anoop Kumar Bhardwaj, Chandra Prakash, and Vijaykant Yadav. Students of the department will also participate in the diggings.

The planned excavation assumes more significance because there has been no digging on the ancient Buddhist pilgrimage trail between Bodh Gaya and Varanasi. The antiquities found on the surface indicate it was a thriving centre of religious activities.

The diggings would bring to light the historicity of the place, art, architecture, the purpose for which the structures were used, and cultural traits.