Ancient Crafts Village Unearthed Near Varanasi

The site found at Bambhaniya may be one of the ancient craft villages mentioned in the old Hindu texts. The artifacts unearthed there belong to a very old human settlement near Varanasi that once probably was a sub-centre of the holy city.

The remnants of a temple discovered in the village most probably belong to a structure built between the 5th and 8th century AD. Some pottery pieces gathered on site are as old as 4000 years, and parts of the walls are about 2,000 years old. There is also a pillar with two lines of a text in Kushan Brahmi script which is estimated to date some 3500-4000 years back.

Proximity to Varanasi allows to suppose it used to be an urban settlement. The cultural deposit measures 5 metres high and shows obvious similarity to another ancient village unearthed in Sarnath, 10 kilometres north-east of Varanasi. Earlier, other crafts villages have been discovered near Tilmapur, 25 km north of Varanasi and Ramnagar, at the border of Uttarakand state.

Pictured: Rajghat archeological site in Varanasi

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