The Sanghol sculptures
In 1985 excavators at Sanghol, between Ludhiana and Chandigarh, found 117 carved pillars and railing pieces of a Kushan-era Buddhist stupa, buried as if hidden: women beneath flowering trees, lovers, drinkers and dancers.
The panels show the yakshis and salabhanjikas, women holding the branches of trees, that guarded the gateways of early stupas. They are among the finest Kushan sculptures found anywhere in India.
Sanghol was lived in for more than two thousand years; pottery of the late Harappan period has also been found in its mound. The site museum stands beside the excavations.
More sculpture
The Buddha in the years of starvation before his enlightenment, every rib and vein showing: the most famous sculpture of Gandhara, found at Sikri near Mardan.
Princely figures of the Buddha-to-be, with moustaches, turbans, jewels and sandals, modelled on the Kushan nobles of Gandhara.
A hilltop monastery near Taxila whose stupas are ringed with rows of seated Buddhas modelled in stucco, many still in place.
A small stupa from Sikri, near Mardan, set up again in the Lahore Museum, its drum carved with thirteen panels of the life of the Buddha.
A gilded reliquary found in 1908–09 in the ruins of Kanishka's great stupa at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri outside Peshawar. On its lid the Buddha sits between the gods Brahma and Indra; on its side stands a Kushan king, probably Kanishka himself.
One of Ashoka's inscribed pillars, carved with his edicts in Brahmi. Firuz Shah Tughlaq had it carried from Topra to Delhi in 1356 on a cart said to have had forty-two wheels; its script was finally read by James Prinsep in 1837.