page_title: Sankassa
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Sankassa / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Sankissa elephant, simulation of what the original sculpture may have looked like.
context_page_description: Sankassa was an ancient city in India. The city came into prominence at the time of Gautama Buddha. According to a Buddhist source, it was thirty leagues from Savatthi. After the Gautama Buddha's Mahaparinirvana king Ashoka developed this place and installed one of his famous Pillars of Ashoka in the city, from which the elephant capital survives. He also built a stupa and a temple commemorating the visit of the Buddha. This temple exists even today and the ruins of the stupa are also present as a temple of Vishari Devi. It is said that the name Visahari Devi is given to the mother of the Buddha.
  Currently it has ruins of old monasteries and Buddhist monuments. It is rarely visited by pilgrims since it is difficult to go to, and there are not many facilities. After a long time Alexander Cunningham discovered the place in 1842. Eighty-seven years later Sir Anagarika Dharmapala came here on spiritual quest. In 1957 Panditha Madabawita Wijesoma Thero came to 'Sankissa' for few years and started a Buddhist school for poor people.
context_section_description: A shrine was erected on the spot where the Buddha's right foot first touched the ground at Sankissa. When the Chinese pilgrims, Xuanzang and Faxian, visited the place, they found three ladders, which had been built of brick and stone by the ancients, to commemorate the Buddha's descent, but the ladders were nearly sunk in the earth.
  There was, in the Buddha's time, a deer park at Sankissa where Suhemanta Thera heard the Buddha preach. During the Vajjiputta controversy, Revata Thera, on his way from Soreyya to Sahajati, went through Sankissa. The road he took passed through Sankissa, Kannakujja, Udumbara and Aggalapura. The excavations carried out in the place did not reveal any artifacts of importance. 
  An elephant capital from the period of the Mauryas was found at the site.
caption: Possible reconstitution of the elephant.
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