Bharhut

Bharhut is a small village in Madhya Pradesh whose name belongs to one of India's most important early Buddhist stupas, a monument dating to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE during the Maurya and Shunga periods. The site was discovered in 1873 by Alexander Cunningham of the Archaeological Survey of India, though by then it was already heavily ruined. The surviving sections of its enclosure railing (vedika), carved from dark red polished sandstone, are covered in some of the earliest surviving Buddhist narrative reliefs — Jataka tales, yaksha figures, and elaborate floral scrollwork — making them foundational documents of early Indian art history. Almost all the carved panels were removed to the Indian Museum in Kolkata for preservation, leaving only scattered remnants at the original site near Satna. Visitors interested in the sculptures themselves must travel to Kolkata to see them in full.