Nagarjunakonda

Nagarjunakonda (“the hill of Nagarjuna”) in Andhra Pradesh was a Buddhist university-town of the Ikshvaku dynasty — some thirty monasteries, stupas, and apsidal temples on the Krishna — submerged by the Nagarjuna Sagar dam (1960) and rescued island-museum: archaeology’s greatest salvage operation in India.

Description

The excavations (1950s, before the dam’s waters rose) exposed a complete Buddhist city: the Mahachaitya, viharas of every school (the inscriptions name bhikkhus and bhikkhunis of Mahayana, and the earliest documented monasteries of several schools in the south), the apsidal chaitya temples, a stadium, baths, and the Ikshvaku queens’ donor-inscriptions (the women of the dynasty endowed more than the kings — a remarkable epigraphic record of female patronage). The site’s name honors Nagarjuna by tradition.

Historical context

Nagarjunakonda’s 3rd-century inscriptions are a primary source for South Indian Buddhism’s institutional life — schools, sects, trade-funded monasteries, and women’s endowments; the excavated sculpture (the “Andhra school”) is a major corpus.

Modern status

An island museum (reached by ferry) displays the salvaged monuments and finds; the site is a protected Archaeological Survey complex — the ancient city preserved under and above the reservoir’s waters.

Verification notes

• The excavation reports and inscriptional corpus are documented (the ASI’s Nagarjunakonda publications).
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).