Sanghol, also called Uchha Pind Sanghol, sits near Khamano about 40 kilometres from Chandigarh on the road to Ludhiana. A Buddhist stupa was excavated there in 1968.
In February 1985, 117 carved stone slabs were unearthed: 69 pillars, 35 crossbars, and figures. They are Kushan sculpture of the Mathura school, first to second century AD, in Mathura sandstone. Kushan fire altars with carbonised plant remains were also found.
More than 15,000 artefacts have come out of the site, spanning the late Harappan period around 1720-1300 BC through to the sixth century AD.
A Buddhist monastic complex in the middle of the Sikh heartland surprises most visitors.
The railing pillars are Mathura red sandstone, carved with female figures under trees in a style found otherwise a thousand kilometres away, and they had been deliberately buried in a pit in antiquity, which is why they survived complete.
Nobody knows why they were buried. The usual explanations are that the stupa was being dismantled and the carvings hidden, or that they were interred as an act of piety. There is no evidence for either.
The mound also holds a late Harappan level, a painted grey ware level and Kushan-period structures, which makes Sanghol one of very few sites in Punjab with a stratified sequence covering three thousand years. Most of it is unexcavated and two modern villages sit on part of it.