Vaishali (ancient city)

Vaishali, Vesali or Vaiśālī was an ancient city and today an archaeological site located north of Patna in present-day Bihar, India. It is also a Jain and Buddhist pilgrimage site. As an archaeological site it is spread over a group of modern villages located within the Vaishali District in Tirhut Division.

It was the capital city of the Vajjika League considered one of the first examples of a republic that dates from c. 6th century BCE. Gautama Buddha preached his last sermon before his mahaparinirvana in c. 544 BCE, and Vaishali is also home to two important stupas directly related to the Buddha, the Relic Stupa of Vaishali, which is said to contain the ashes of the Buddha, The 24th and last Tirthankara of Jainism, Mahavira, was born in Kundagrama which has been identified as a suburb of the city of Vaishali and he was therefore referred to as Vesālie.

In 383 BCE the Second Buddhist council was convened here by King Kalashoka. It also contains one of the best-preserved of the Pillars of Ashoka from the 3rd century BCE, topped by a single Asiatic lion.

The city finds mention in the travel accounts of Chinese explorers, Faxian (4th century CE) and Xuanzang (7th century CE), which were later used in 1861 by British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham to first identify Vaiśālī with the present village of Basarh in the Vaishali District of Bihar. Since 2010, parts of the Vaishali archaeological site including the relic stupa and Asokan pillar have been considered a tentative site under the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list, in the category of the Silk Road sites in India.