Archaeological Gazetteer of Gaya District

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I am grateful to Shri Nitish Kumar, the honourable Chief Minister of Bihar, who has evinced a keen interest in the archaeological heritage of Bihar, and has personally backed up the present project of documentating the antiquarian remains in Bihar.

During the course of exploring the sites and remains at the grassroots, I visited numerous villages, and was amazed to see how curious and helpful the villagers were in guiding me to the antiquarian spots. I must express my deep gratitude to them. I have been encouraged by numerous professionals- from universities, ASI, Archaeology Directorates and so on- for persevering with this project. Their words of encouragement helped me to stay focused on the project.

I would specially like to thank Shri Ajit Kumar Prasad, a senior archaeologist and formerly with the Directorate of Archaeology, Govt. of Bihar, for examining the potsherds collected from each site, and offering his written comments on them. Dr. Arvind Mahajan of the Directorate of Museums provided useful comments on the documented sculptures on the basis of the photographs shown to them. I would like to thank him for this.

Special thanks are due to our dedicated team of Research Investigators who carried on with the long and arduous exercise with great sincerity. Their names figure in each volume of the gazetteer at the inner cover page.

District of Gaya has an illustrious history, the antiquity of which goes far back to the second millennium BCE. Two prominent places within the district are Bodhgaya, the birth- place of Buddhism, and the town of Gaya, one of three eminent Hindu sacred centres for performing funerary rituals (śraddha). Because of these two prominent religious centres, Gaya has been mentioned in innumerable texts and inscriptions of both these religious traditions. In addition, the ornate temples and a rich collection of sculpture, attesting the sacrality of place, has attracted attention of scholars since the eighteenth century onwards, a trend that has continued into the twenty-first century as well. In fact, Alexander Cunningham, after his appointment as the Archaeological Surveyor in 1861, began his survey from Gaya, which is a testimony of the historical importance of this district.