The Hill of Sanchi is situated about nine kilometers southwest of Vidisha in Madhaya Pradesh, India. Crowning the hilltop of Sanchi nearly ninty-one metres in height, a group of Buddhist monuments commands a grand view even from a distance. It is unique not only in its having the most perfect and well-preserved stupas but also in its offering a wide and educative field for the study of the genesis, efflorescence and decay of Buddhist art and architecture for a period of about thirteen hundred years, from the third century B.C. to the twelfth century, A.D., almost covering the whole range of Indian Buddhism. This is rather surprising, for Sanchi was not hallowed by any incident in Buddha's life; not is it known to have been the focus of any significant event in the history of Buddhist monachism. Hiuen Tsang, who so meticulously recorded the details connected with Buddhist monuments, is silent about it. The only possible reference to it is contained in the chronicles of Sri Lanka, according to which Mahendra, son of Asoka and his queen Devi, daughter of a merchant of Vidisa, (modern Besnagar near Bhilsa or Vidisha) whom Asoka had married during his halt there on his way to Ujjayani as a viceroy, is said to have visited his mother at Vidisa, and the latter took him up to the beautiful monastery of Vedisagiri built by herself. Mahendra had stayed there for a month before he set out for Sri Lanka.

The foundation of the great religious establishment at Sanchi destined to have a glorious career as an important centre of Buddhism for many centuries to come, was probably laid by the great Maurya emperor Asoka (circa 273-236 B.C.), when he built a stupa and erected a monolithic pillar here. In addition to his marriage with a lady of Vidisa, the reason for his selection of this particular spot may be due to the fact that the hilltop served as an ideal place for giving a concrete shape to the newly aroused zeal for Buddhism in the emperor, who is said to have opened up seven out of the eight original stupas erected over the body relics of Buddha and to have distributed the relics among innumerable stupas built by himself all over his empire. By its quietude and seclusion ensuring a proper atmosphere for meditation, combined with its proximity to the rich and populous city of Vidisa, Sanchi fulfilled all the conditions required for an ideal Buddhist monastic life. The dedicatory inscriptions at Sanchi unmistakably show that the prosperity of the Buddhist establishment here was, to a great extent, due to the piety of the rich mercantile community of Vidisa. The nearness of the city, the strategic situation of which - at the confluence of two rivers, the Betwa and the Bes, as well as on two important trade routes resulted in a great overflow of wealth, was in no small measure responsible for the flourishing condition of Sanchi even when the empire of the Mauryas was a thing of the past.

After a temporary setback following the breakup of the Maurya empire, when the stupa of Asoka was damaged, the cause of the Buddhist establishment of Kakanaya was taken up with a feverish zeal by the monks and the laity alike, not a negligible percentage of the latter being formed by visitors of Vidisa for trade and other purposes. The religious fervour found its expression in vigorous building activity about the middle of the second century B.C., during which the Sungas were ruling and which saw the stone encasing and enlargement of the stupa of Asoka, the erection of balustrades round its ground, berm, stairway and harmika, the reconstruction of Temple 40 and the building of Stupas 2 and 3. The same intense religious aspiration and creative forces continued unabated in the next century as well, when, during the supremacy of the Satavahanas, new embellishments, in the form of elaborately-carved gateways, were added to the stupas.