Ahmedabad: Vadnagar, now famous as the city’s origin of PM Narendra Modi, has revealed his wealth to experts from an Indian Archaeological Survey (ASI) – the elliptical structure (capsules) similar to other ancient sites related to Buddhism, Sealing with words – The first word as in the coffin found on the site Devni Mori has connected ancient city strongly with Indian Buddhist heritage.
The result was distributed by the V of the V Branch of the Indian Archaeological Survey (ASI) on the first day of the two-day workshop on Tuesday.
Workshops, who have experts from various fields related to Archaeology – from Archaeo-Botani to land penetration radar – has been organized to assess progress made in Vadnagar in the past seven years.
High officials including Raghvendra Singh, Secretary (Culture), and V Vidhavathi, with ASI, participated in the event.
The ancient city entered the center of attention in the 2000s by finding a monastery right in the middle of the city.
In recent years, the ASI team has explored several structures in and around the city, strongly placing a 2,500-year-old city on the Buddhist map.
Dr.
Abhijit Amkarkar, Archaeologist Preserving Pursuit Responsible V Working in Vadnagar said in his presentation that only four Archaeological sites – Rajgir, Besh, Sraverta and Nagarjunakonda, three of them were related to Buddhism and Besnagar with Vaishnavism – had reported the previous design structure.
“Identified as Mandalamala in Pali literature, such structures may be used for the church or to accommodate the temple,” he said, adding that the structure in Vadnagar has Pradakshinapath (a cycle lane) around it.
“From the evidence so far, it may be contemporary from other structures.
While four other structures come from the 5th century BC to the 2nd century, the structure in Vadnagar comes from the 1st century and 6th century.” Three Seals found from other sites – are believed to be a stupa because of the circular design – near the city boundary wall near the Sharmishtha Lake.
“Sealing has the same letter ‘NamassarVagyaya’ (Greetings to Lord Buddha) as the first letter found in the coffin found from Devni Mori.
We can conclude that sealing is contemporary to the site,” said Dr.
Amlaborate in his presentation.
The ancient coffin was found on the stupa in Devni Mori during the previous excavation.