Telhara, Nalanda district

Telhara Telhāḍa
village
Telhara Location in Bihar, India
Coordinates: 25.226334°N 85.181587°E / 25.226334; 85.181587
Country	India
State	Bihar
District	Nalanda
Gram Panchayat	Ekangarsarai
Languages
• Spoken	Hindi, Magadhi
Time zone	UTC+5:30 (IST)
PIN	801306
Vehicle registration	BR-21
Nearest cities	Jehanabad (22 km) Bihar Sharif (35 km) Patna (63 km)

Telhara is a village in Ekangarsarai block of Nalanda district, in Bihar. It is also the site of the Telhara monastery which dates back to the 1st-century CE.^[1]

Buddhist monastery

Main article: Telhara monastery

Telhara was the site of a Buddhist monastery in ancient India. It has been mentioned as Teladhaka in the writings of the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang, who visited the place in the 7th century CE.^[2] It is mentioned in an inscription found at Nālandā which mentions a temple restored a man named Bālāditya, a Jyāvisa of Telāḍhaka who had emigrated from Kauśāmbī, in the eleventh year of Mahipala Deva. ^[3]

It has been also mentioned in the Ain-i-Akbari as Tiladah, and is shown as one of the 46 mahals (administrative units) of the Bihar sarkar. Telhara was shown as a pargana in the maps prepared by the East India Company administration during 1842–45.^[4]

The ruins of Telhara were mentioned in an 1872 letter by A. M. Broadley, the then Magistrate of Nalanda. Broadley noted that a large number of stone and metal images were often found during the digging of graves at the top of one of the mounds. Metal images found were melted down.^[5] The State Government of Bihar started a new archaeological excavation of the site in December 2009. The work unearthed ancient pottery, antiques, and the remains of a three-storeyed structure mentioned by Hiuen Tsang. Evidence of prayer halls and residential cells in the monastery have been found. The excavation revealed the following chronological layers:^[4]

Bodhisattva Lokeshvara from Telhara, new at Rietberg Museum

1. Northern Black Polished Ware (3rd Century BCE)
2. Kushan (1st century CE)
3. Gupta (5th to 7th century CE)
4. Pala (7th century to 11th century CE)

A number of sculptures from the site had been moved to museums during the British Raj. The Indian Museum in Kolkata houses the Maitreya and the twelve-armed Avalokiteswar images from Telhara. A Pala sculpture from the site is present at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich. Telhara has a mosque, which is said to have been built with the materials carried from the ruins of the Buddhist monastery.^[4] One pillar contained an inscription that mentions the place-name Telāḍhaka.

Remains of an ancient university (Mahavihara) on the site were unearthed in 2014.^[6][7]

A small museum named Baladitya Museum has been established to store some of the artifacts found.

Administration

Telhara comes under the administration of the Ekangarsarai gram panchayat. There are 5 census villages in the Telhara area:^[8]

1. Hajipur
2. Khajepura
3. Rasulpur
4. Telhara
5. Telhara Sani

References

1. Salila Kulshreshtha (5 October 2017). From Temple to Museum: Colonial Collections and Umā Maheśvara Icons in the Middle Ganga Valley. Taylor & Francis. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-351-35609-1.
2. Leoshko, Janice (1988). "Buddhist Images from Telhara, a Site in Eastern India". South Asian Studies. 4: 90–97. doi:10.1080/02666030.1988.9628371.
3. The Palas of Bengal, R. D. BANERJI, 1915
4. Dr. Atul Kumar Verma. "Telhara (Nalanda) Excavation - A Brief Report (PDF)" (PDF). Retrieved 15 January 2014.
5. Explored Sculptural Heritage of Telhara, District Nalanda, Bihar: A Recent Visit, Pampa Biswas, Puravritta Volume 1, 2016, p. 167–182
6. "Another ancient university found in Nalanda | Patna News - Times of India". The Times of India.
7. "Telhara university". Archived from the original on 22 April 2016.
8. "Reports of National Panchayat Directory". Retrieved 15 January 2014.

External links

• Map showing Telhara's location within the Ekangarsarai block