The mounds of Zehanpora along the historic erstwhile Srinagar-Jhelum Valley road, have fallen silent for winter, but the story they unearthed has only grown louder.
The excavations at the Baramulla site claimed by archaeologists as a 2,000-year-old Buddhist complex from the Kushan era — have thrust Kashmir back into the heart of ancient Buddhist history. Spotlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his December Mann Ki Baat, the discovery, first hinted at in a rare French archival photograph of three stupas, is set to resume in April, promising to reveal more of the Valley’s forgotten Buddhist past.
The Buddhist site discovered last year in Zehanpora village of north Kashmir has been closed for excavation for the winter, with work set to resume in April for three months, archaeologists said.
The site has been secured with concertina wire and police presence to protect it. Locals earlier used the area for recreation. The excavation has revealed remains from the Kushan period, revealing Kashmir’s ancient Buddhist past.
The site is close to the Srinagar–Jhelum Valley road- that was Kashmir’s only reliable link to the outside world untill 1950 before construction of the Jawahar Tunnel on the Srinagar–Jammu highway.
Prof Mohammad Ajmal Shah, who led the discovery, said the excavation is being carried out jointly by the Department of Central Asian Studies at the University of Kashmir and the Department of Archives, Archaeology and Museums.
He called the discovery one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Kashmir in recent years.
Prof Shah said his team had surveyed the area for several years and was convinced it was a major historical site because of three large mounds there.
However, Prof Shah said that while on a research fellowship in Paris in 2023, he came across an old photograph in a museum showing a large Buddhist stupa in Kashmir.
“In the archival photography section of a French museum, I found several old photographs of Kashmir taken by British travellers. One of them showed the stupa domes of Kashmir and I immediately recognized it as Zehanpora I had been visiting for years. After returning to Kashmir, we carried out further surveys and approached the government for excavation,” he said.
Shah said in the past 100 years the landscape has changed and that might have also impacted the size.
He said the parts of the site were damaged during the construction of the Lower Jhelum Hydropower Project’s a canal that divided the site into parts in the 1970s. Local residents have told archaeologists that during the construction of the canal they found stone walls.
The formal excavation began last October after the University of Kashmir signed a memorandum of understanding with the department of archives. During they found a wall beneath and hall indicating a larger Buddhist settlement of Khushan period in Kashmir.
Prof Shah said the discovery throws light on ancient Kashmir, a period that remains poorly studied. He said the site’s location at a crossroads of old routes suggests it was an important center in the past. Majid Jahangir
