Discovered in 1942 and rediscovered in 2003, the Phanigiri Buddhist site is considered one of the most important finds in Buddhist iconography in this millennium. Nearly 20 years after the fantastic find of the Phanigiri artefacts, they are wowing another part of the world at the art collection of the Tree and Serpent exhibition, which began at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (popularly known as The Met) in July. The exhibition has 125 objects between 200BCE and 400 CE.
Phanigiri (meaning hillock of snake hood) in Suryapet district is a small village of about 4,000 residents, about 150 km from Hyderabad. The Phanigiri Gutta, where most of the discoveries of the early Buddhist era were made, is considered a narrative-changing find.
“The thoranas discovered at Phanigiri are very important as they are among the first found south of Sanchi. The same thorana has a panel that shows both Mahayana and Hinayana school of thought, which shows that despite philosophical differences, both the sects co-existed in Phanigiri,” says a scholar who researched the place.
