2600-year-old Staircase to heaven

Sankisa Basantpur, Farrukhabad After a four- hour drive from Lucknow, six- hour from Delhi-- the last leg of which takes one though stretches  slightly as wide as one's auto, bisecting  townlets with population of 500 or  lower, lush green  foliage on both sides, old trees gnarled into overhead  bends-- one arrives at Sankisa Basantpur in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad  quarter. 

The  bitsy  vill, with a population of around 2,000, shares its border with two other  sections – Etah and Mainpuri – the nearest  metropolises, Etah and Farrukhabad, being at least 40 kilometres down. There's nothing striking about the place except a mound that has three breakouts of  slipup stairs that's by  utmost accounts around 2600- time-old. Among Buddhists across the world, it's  reverenced as the “ staircase to heaven ”.  

The Buddha’s Descent   Sankasya( also Sankissa, Sankassa) is one of the ‘ Eight Great Places ’( Ashtamahasthan, in the Pali canons) of the Buddhist passage. According to Buddhist literature, it was then that the Buddha performed the ‘  phenomenon of descending from the  welkin accompanied by Indra and Brahma ’. 

The Buddhist  textbook says that in his 41st time, the Buddha went up from Shravasti to the Trayastrimsa( also called Tushita) heaven and passed the  stormy season retreat  tutoring Abhidharma to his  mama  Mayadevi, who had  failed seven days after his birth. Three months  latterly, at the time of his descent from paradise,  lords and addicts from the eight  fiefdoms gathered at Sankisa. According to Buddhist literature, a flight of gold stairs appeared, which the Buddha climbed down accompanied by Brahma on the right and by Indra holding a jewelled marquee on the left wing. 

 The relief of Buddha’s descent from heaven has been  set up at Sanchi, Bharhut, Sankisa and a many other places.   In 249 BC, King Ashoka visited Sankisa as part of his passage to all eight places of the Buddha’s life. He constructed a stupa and erected one of his pillars, 60  bases high according to Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian who visited Sankisa in the 5th century.  Pilgrims From China .

  The Chinese  trippers – Fa Hian and Hwen Thsang, 7th century — mentioned Sankisa as ‘ Song- kia- she or Kia- pi- tha ’ in their accounts. Samuel Beal in his  restated account of Fa Hian – peregrination of Fah- Hian and Sung- Yun, Buddhist pilgrims, from China to India( 400 bulletin and 518 bulletin) – also relates an  intriguing tale about Sankisa. 

“ As per legend, Bodhisattva Maitreya was born then in Sankassa as a millionaire named Siriwardhana at the period of the Buddha Gautama, and on this exact day, the day the Buddha descended from heaven Tavatimsa, Siriwardhana arrived to this area and was admitted to the Buddha’s  division then, ” Beal writes. Not much is known about Siriwardhana but the story confirms the  saintship of Sankisa indeed during the Buddha’s continuance. 

  Hwen Thsang saw a 70-  bottom high staircase at the spot where the Buddha had descended from heaven. He describes the “ three holy breakouts of  way as being in a line from north to south and facing east ”. On the top of the stairs was a  tabernacle with a gravestone image of the Buddha that according to Fa Hian was 16 cubit( 16 ft) altitudinous. near to the stairs was a 70 ft high Ashokan pillar, he wrote.   Both Hwen Thsang and Fa Hien saw three graduations in the decaying  sanctum, which had been made of bricks and gravestone by the elders to mark the Buddha’s descent, but the graduations were  virtually submerged in the ground.( James B Pratt, The Passage of Buddhism, 1928) .

Both Hwen Thsang and Fa Hien saw three graduations in the decaying  sanctum, which had been made of bricks and gravestone by the elders to mark the Buddha’s descent, but the graduations were  virtually submerged in the ground.( James B Pratt, The Passage of Buddhism, 1928)   Both the pilgrims saw the pillar, which is now  each gone except its  notorious  giant capital, still standing. While Fa Hian saw Sankisa full of shramnas( Buddhist monks), Hwen Thsang saw a stronger presence of Brahmans and their  tabernacle in the area.   Sankisa’s Detection  .

 In 1842, Alexander Cunningham  linked the  vill of Sankisa Basantpur with the place Sankasya mentioned by Fa Hian. “ In March 1876, I went there( to Sankisa) for the express purpose of searching for the remains of the great Asoka pillar, of which only the  giant capital now exists above ground, ” Cunningham wrote( ASI, Vol XI). The archaeologist mentioned that the  point was appertained to as the mound of Bisari Devi by  also.

 He concluded that the three breakouts of holy  way, as mentioned by the Chinese pilgrims, must have  clearly been on this mound.   He dug up the remains of the base of the Ashokan pillar grounded on the  computations of Fa Hian and  set up some important terracotta  numbers, coin and soapstone artefacts.   The  point has yielded the painted  slate earthenware culture( middle and late Vedic period) and northern black polished earthenware( Mahajanapadas and Mauryan ages) and its associated red wares( IAR 1955- 6). 

Coins of bobby  , also punch- marked, and an necrology with form representing a graduation with the figure of Bhikshuni Utpala, whose tale is related by both Fa Hian and Hwen Thsang, at the base and a shrine of soapstone were some of the important finds at the  point.   Grounded on the depth of the  giant capital and accumulation of soil in over 2000 times, Cunnigham calculated that an earthquake eventually in 750 announcement must have razed the pillar and the great  friary, Sangharama, at Sankisa. 

  “ Judging by the consistence of the enclosing wall of the  friary, I can not help allowing that it must have been thrown down by an earthquake; and as it's lying in the same direction as the prostrate pillar, I suspect that both may have fallen at the same time, ” he wrote( tenures in the Gangetic businesses from Badaon to Bihar, 1875- 76 & 1877- 78). 

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