Phanigiri

Abstract

Phanigiri is an early Buddhist site in the Nalgonda district of Telangana state, southeastern India. Recent excavations in 2001–7 and 2018 revealed extensive remains of a Buddhist monastic complex on the top of a granite hill with abundant sculptures and inscriptions and a hoard of lead coins issued by a local feudatory. The sculptural, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence suggests that the peak period of the monastery was the late Ikṣvāku period and even after (ca. the late third–fourth centuries ce ).