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Sarnath is one of the four holy places associated with the life of the Buddha. This is the place where after attaining enlightenment at Bodhgaya, Buddha delivered his first sermon to five disciples. This event is known as 'Dharma-Chakra-Pravartana' or the "Turning of the Wheel of Law' in Buddhist literature. This is also the place where he laid the foundation of the first Buddhist Sangha. This place is recorded as Rishipatan Rşipatana or Isipatana and Mrgadāva or Mrgadāya in Buddhist texts. The present-day name of Sarnath is believed to have come from the nearby Śiva temple of Saranganātha (lit. "Lord of the Deer"). This site is regarded as an important religious centre by the Jaina community as well, for being the place where the eleventh Tirthankara, Śreyāmśanātha practiced his penances and meditation.
The archaeological importance of Sarnath came to light in the latter half of the 18th century CE, when the ancient mound was dug by Babu Jagat Singh of Kashi, for the extraction of construction material. Important artefacts were discovered during digging, and consequently, excavations were conducted by several archaeologists at the site, from 1798 to 2018. These excavations unearthed ruins of Buddhist monasteries, Stupas, temples, inscriptions, sculptures and other remains and antiquities, dateable from the 3rd century BCE to the 12th century CE. Noteworthy among them are the Dhamek Stupa, Mulgandha Kuti, an Ashokan pillar with the Lion Capital and Dharma-Chakra, Sangharamas, votive Stupas, and several sculptures. The Archaeological Survey of India maintains a museum near the site which displays the valuable findings, sculptures and other objects recovered from the excavations.
On 26 January 1950, the Government of India adopted the Ashok Stambh with the four-lion head capital, found during the excavations at Sarnath, as the National Emblem of Independent India.
सारनाथ भगवान बुद्ध के जीवन काल से संबंधित चार प्रमुख बौद्ध तीर्थ स्थलों में से एक है। बोधगया में ज्ञान प्राप्ति के पश्चात् उन्होंने अपने प्रथम पांच शिष्यों को यहीं पर पहला धर्मोपदेश दिया, जो 'धर्म-चक्र-प्रवर्तन' के नाम से बौद्ध साहित्य में वर्णित है। भगवान बुद्ध ने स्वयं इस स्थल पर प्रथम बौद्ध संघ की स्थापना भी की थी। बौद्ध ग्रन्थों में इस स्थान के लिए उल्लिखित ऋषिपत्तन अथवा इसिपत्तन एवं मृगदाव अथवा मृगदाय आदि नाम उल्लिखित हैं। इसका आधुनिक नाम निकटस्थ महादेव मंदिर सारंगनाथ (मृगों के स्वामी) से उद्भूत जान पड़ता है। जैन धर्मावलंबियों के लिए भी ग्यारहवें तीर्थंकर श्रेयांसनाथ की तपोस्थली होने के कारण सारनाथ समान रूप से पवित्र तीर्थ है।
इस स्थान का पुरातात्विक महत्व तब प्रकाश में आया जब काशी के बाबू जगतसिंह ने अट्ठारहवीं शती ईसवी के उत्तरार्ध में भवन निर्माण सामग्री निकालने के लिये यहां के प्राचीन टीलों की खुदाई करवायी। खुदाई के दौरान मिले अवशेषों के महत्व को ध्यान में रखकर सन् 1798 से 2018 तक अनेक उत्खननकर्ताओं द्वारा समय समय पर इस स्थल का उत्खनन किया गया। परिणाम स्वरूप तीसरी शती ईसवी पूर्व से लेकर बारहवीं सदी ईसवी के मध्य निर्मित अनेक बौद्ध विहार, स्तूप, मंदिर, स्तम्भ, अभिलेख, मूर्ति-शिल्प एवं अन्य पुरावशेष अनावृत हुये, जिनमें धर्मराजिका स्तूप, धम्मेख स्तूप, मूलगंध कुटी, अशोक स्तंभ-सिंह-शीर्ष सहित धर्मचक्र - जिन अन्य संघाराम, बहुसंख्य मनौती स्तूप तथा अनेक मूर्तियां प्रमुख हैं। समीप में ही भारतीय पुरातत्त्व सर्वेक्षण द्वारा संचालित पुरातत्त्व संग्रहालय है जिसमें इस स्थल की खुदाई से प्राप्त मूर्तियां व अन्य पुरावस्तुयें दर्शकों के अवलोकनार्थ प्रदर्शित हैं। यहां से प्राप्त अशोक स्तंभ के सिंह शीर्ष को स्वतंत्र भारत के राष्ट्रीय चिन्ह के रूप में स्वीकार किया गया है।
鹿野苑,是关于释加牟尼佛生四大圣地之一。在菩提迦叶成佛后佛在这里第一次讲法给先五个大弟子们。就是这个大事在佛教书里介绍的初转法轮。就在这里释迦牟尼佛自己成立了第一个佛法僧。在佛教书里这个地方名字是利西他坦(RISHIPATAN)或异硫丹(ISSIPATANA) (修行人住的地方),和格里格达瓦(MRIGADAVA)或里加达亚 (MRIGADAYA) (鹿野苑)介绍的。这个地方的现代的名字好像按照附近的湿婆神庙萨礽纳特(鹿王)的名字取得。因为这个地方是耆那教徒的第十一个神人奢雅色纳特 (SHREYANSANATH)修行的地方,所以跟佛教一样耆那教圣地。最先1798年邓肯先生(MR. DUNCAN)和麦肯齐 (COL. E MACKENZIE)照明了这个考古地的重要。后来几个考古家几次考古考察了这个地方。有亚历山大;坎宁安 (ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM)1835-36,凯托(major kittoe) 1851-52,厄特尔(F. O. OERTEL) 1904-05,约翰;马歇尔爵士(SIR JOHN MARSHALL) 1907,哈格里夫斯(M. H. HARGREAVES) 1914-15,还达亚兰;萨尼是主要的。所以从公元前300到公元1200中修建的几个院子,塔,寺庙,经文,雕像和考古发掘发现的,其中法王塔,初转法轮塔,穆尔甘德库蒂(根本佛法庵),阿育王石柱(跟狮子头),初转法轮院子,和僧院,许多还原小塔, 还很多雕像都是重要的。附近有印度考古部门管理的当地考古博物馆,里有这里的出土的雕像和文物展览给访客看。
မိဂဒါဝုန်သည် ဗုဒ္ဓမြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ဘဝနှင့်ပတ်သက်သော သံဝေဇနိယလေးဌာနထဲတွင် တစ်ခုအပါအဝင်ဖြစ်သည်။ ဤနေရာသည် ဗုဒ္ဓမြတ်စွာဘုရား မဟာဗောဓိပင်ရင်း၌ ဉာဏ်အလင်း ရရှိတော်မူပြီးနောက် ပဉ္စဝဂ္ဂီ (၅)ဦးတို့အား ပထမဆုံးတရားဦးဒေသနာတော်ကို ဟောကြားတော် မူခဲ့သောနေရာဖြစ်သည်။ ဗုဒ္ဓစာပေတွင် ဤတရားတော်ကို ဓမ္မစက္ကပဝတ္တန (သို့မဟုတ်) ဓမ္မစကြာ(တရားစကြာ) ဟု ခေါ်တွင်ပါသည်။ ဤနေရာသည် ဗုဒ္ဓမြတ်စွာဘုရားကိုယ်တိုင် ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာဝင်တို့၏ ပထမဦးဆုံးသော သံဃာအဖွဲ့အစည်း အခြေခံအုတ်မြစ်ချခဲ့သော နေရာ ဖြစ်ပြီး ဗုဒ္ဓစာပေများတွင် ရိရှိပတန် (သို့မဟုတ်) ဣသိပတနနှင့် မိဂဒါဝ (သို့မဟုတ်) မိဂဒါယဟု ခေါ်ဆိုကြပါသည်။ ဆာရ်နတ်ဟူသောအမည်သည် ဆာရန်ဂနာ့သ် (သမင်များ၏အရှင်) ဟူသော အနီးအနားရှိ မဟာဒေဝဘုရားကျောင်း၏အမည်မှ ဆင်းသက်လာပုံရသော အမည်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ဆာရ်နတ်သည် ၁၁ ပါးမြောက်ဖြစ်သော တြိထာန်ကာရအား အလေးအနက်ထားရာနှင့် သာယာဝပြောမှုဖြစ်တည်သော နေရာတစ်ခုအဖြစ် ဂျိန်းဘာသာဝင်များ၏ ယုံကြည်လက်ခံ ထားသော နေရာလည်းဖြစ်သည်။ ဆာရ်နတ်ကို ၁၇၉၈ ခုနှစ်တွင် ကော်မရှင်နာမင်းကြီး ဒန်ကန်နှင့် ဗိုလ်မှုးကြီးမက္ကန်ဇီတို့မှ ပထမဦးဆုံးတူးဖော်တွေ့ရှိခဲ့ပြီး အလက်ဇန်းဒါးကင်နင်ဟမ် (၁၈၃၅-၁၈၃၆)၊ မေဂျာကစ်တို (၁၈၅၁-၁၈၅၂)၊ မစ္စတာအက်ဖ်အိုအော်ရက်တယ်လ် (၁၉၀၄-၁၉၀၅)၊ ဆာဂျွန်မာရှယ် (၁၉ဝ၇)၊ အမ်အိတ်ချ်ဟာဂရိဗ်စ် (၁၉၁၄-၁၉၁၅)နှင့် ဒါယာရမ်ဆာဟာနီတို့မှ အဆင့်ဆင့်ဆက်လက် တူးဖော်ခဲ့သောကြောင့် ရှေးဟောင်းသုတေသနဆိုင်ရာအရေးပါမှုကို ဦးစွာမီးမောင်းထိုးပြခဲ့သော နေရာဖြစ်သည်။ ဤတူးဖော်မှုတွင် ဘီစီ ၃ရာစုမှ အေဒီ ၁၂ရာစုအထိသက်တမ်းရှိသော အခြားရှေးဟောင်းရှားပါးပစ္စည်းများနှင့် ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်းများ၊ ဘုရားစေတီများ၊ ကမ္ဗည်းကျောက်စာများနှင့် ပန်းပုကျောက်ဆစ်များကို တူးဖော်ရရှိခဲ့ပါသည်။ ၎င်းတို့ထဲမှ ထင်ရှားသောတွေ့ရှိမှုများမှာ ဓမ္မရာဇိကစေတီ၊ ဓမ္မေခစေတီ၊ မူလဂန္ဓကုဋီကျောင်းတော်၊ အသောကမင်းကြီး၏ စတုသီဟနာဒကျောက်တိုင်၊ ဓမ္မစကြာဇိနဝိဟာရကျောင်းတော်၊ အခြားသော ဘုန်းတော်ကြီးကျောင်းများ၊ အုတ်ခွက်ဘုရားအစုအဝေးနှင့် ပန်းပုကျောက်ဆစ်များစွာတို့ ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ အိန္ဒိယရှေးဟောင်းသုတေသနလေ့လာမှုအဖွဲ့မှလည်း မိဂဒါဝုန်၌ တူးဖော် ရရှိထားသော ပန်းပုကျောက်ဆစ်ရုပ်များ၊ ကမ္ဗည်းကျောက်စာများနှင့် အခြားစိတ်ဝင်စားစရာ ဝတ္ထုပစ္စည်းများကို ပြတိုက်အဖြစ် ခင်းကျင်းပြသထိန်းသိမ်းထားရှိပါသည်။
සාරතාත් නමින් සුප්රසිද්ධ මෙම ශුද්ධ භූමිය ගෞතම බුදුරජාණන් වහන්සේගේ ජීවිත කාලයට සම්බන්ධ උතුම් වූ සතර සිද්ධස්ථාන අතරින් ප්රධාන එකකි. බුදු පියාණන් වහන්සේ විසින් බුද්ධගයාවේ ජය ශ්රී මහා බෝ සමිදාණන් අසල දී සම්මා සම්බුද්ධ රාජ්යයට පැමිණීමෙන් අනතුරුව පස්වග තාපසයන් උදෙසා ප්රථම ධර්ම දේශනාව වූ ධම්මක්ඛ පවත්තන සූත්රය දේශනා කරන ලද්දේ මෙම උතුම් භූමියේදීය. සම්බුද්ධ ශාසනයේ භික්ෂු පරපුරේ ආරම්භයද මෙම භූමියේදී සිදු වූ තවත් සුවිශේෂී සිදු වීමකි. බෞද්ධ සාහිත්යයේ සාරර්තාතය ඉසිපතන (සෘම්පතන), මිගදාය (මිගදාව) වැනි වෙනත් නම් වලින්ද හදුනවා ඇත. ඒ අතරින් මුල්ම කාලයේ ව්යවහාරයට ගැණුනු " සරත්ගනාත් '' යන්න කෙට කිරීමෙන් සාරනාත් යන නම් විවහාරයට පැමිණ ඇත. සාරතය භක්තිකයන් අතරද පුජනියත්වට පත්ව ඇත්තේ එකලොස්වන තීර්ථීකර තුමාගේ පත්ම භූමිය වන නිසාය. පරිහානියට පත්වීමෙන් අනතුරුව සාරනාත්හි ප්රථම පුරාවිද්යා ගවේශන සිදුකර ඇත්තේ ක්රි:ව: 1798 වර්ෂයේදී ඩන්කන් සහ මැකෙන්සි යන මහත්වරුන් විසිනි. මුලික කැණීම් කටයුතුවලින් අනතුරුව පහතසදහන් පුරාවිද්යාඥයන් විසින්ද වරින්වර මෙහි කැණීම් කටයුතු සිදුකර ඇත. ජන ඇලෙක්සැන්ඩර් කනිත් හැමි 1835-36 කිට්ටෝ 185152 එෆ්. ඕ. ඕටෙල් 1904-05 සර් ජෝන් මාර්ෂල් 1907 එම. එව. හාර්ගීස් 1914-15 දයාරාම් සභාති සාරතාත්හි සිදු කල කැනීම් වලින් ක්රිස්තු පූර්ව තුන්වැනි සියවසේ සිට ක්රිස්තු වර්ෂ දොළොස් වැනි සියවස දක්වා ක්රියාකාරීව පැවති වෙහෙර විහාර, ස්ථූප, සංඝාවාස වැනි විහාරාංග සහ පුරාවිද්යා වටිනාකමින් යුතු බුද්ධ ප්රතිමා, බෝධි සත්ව ප්රතිමා, බුද්ධ චරිතයේ විශේෂ අවස්ථා සහිත ගල් කැටයම් සහ සෙල් ලිපි ඇතුලු විශාල පුරාවිද්යා සාධක ප්රමාණයක් සොයාගෙන ඇත. මෙම සොයා ගැනීම් අතරින් ඉතාම වැදගත් ස්ථානයක් හිමිවන්නේ ධර්මරාජික ස්ථූපය, ධම්මික ස්ථූපය, මූලගන්ධ කුටිය, සිංහ මුහුණු සතර සහිත අශෝක කුලුණ, සර්වඥ ධාතු තැන්පත් කල ධර්මරාපික ස්ථූපය, ධර්ම චක්රජිත විහාරය, ධර්ම චක්ර මුද්රාව සහිත සාරනාත් බුද්ධ ප්රතිමාව සහ විවිධ සම්ප්රදායන්ට අයත් බුද්ධ ප්රතිමා සහ බෝධිසත්ව ප්රතිමා සඳහාය. ඉහල පුරාවිද්යා වටිනාකමකින් යුත් ඉපැරණි ගාන්ඩ රාශියක් ඉන්දීය පුරාවිද්යා දෙපාර්මේන්තුව විසින් සාරහාත් කෞතුකාගාරය තුල මහජන ප්රදර්ශණය සඳහා තැන්පත් කොට ඇත.
(1) A. Cunningham, ASI Reports, Vol.I
(2) Guide book of A.S.I. by Dr. B.R.Mani.
(3) Guide book of A.S.I. By V.S. Agarwala
(4) District Gazetteers of Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi.
(5) Rana P.B. Singh and Pravin S. Rana, Banaras region, A spiritual and cultural guide.
(1) Altekhar, A. S.: History of Benares (Benares, 1937)
(2) Anonymous : History of the Province of Benares (Benares, 1882)
(3) Banerji. R. D. : The Age of the Imperial Guptas (Benares, 1933)
(4) Codrington, K. DE B. – Ancient India, London, 1926
(5) Coomarswamy, A. K. – History of India and Indonesian Art, London, 1927
(6) Benares Gazetteer, compiled by H. R. Nevill; Allahabad, 1909, pages 345-362
(7) Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VIII (1905-06) and IX (1907-08)
(8) I-tsing. A record of the Buddhist religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago. Translated by J. Takakusu, Oxford, 1896
(9) Marshall, Sir John. – “The Monuments of Ancient India” in Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, Cambridge, 1922.
(10) Watters, T. – On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, London, 1904-05, Vol. II, pages 46-59.
A letter received from Director (Monument) office of DG, ASI on dated 9th April 2025 regarding World Heritage List 2026_"Ancient Buddhist Site, Sarnath, Varanasi" (India) which has informed that “A communication is forwarded herewith, containing an email received from the World Heritage Evaluation Unit alongside a letter concerning the identification of the ICOMOS expert. The letter proposes a visit by the ICOMOS expert for the technical evaluation of the Ancient Buddhist Site, Sarnath, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, to take place sometime between June and mid-September of this year”.
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