For centuries, Jammu and Kashmir has been described as a region at the edge of empires, religions and civilisations. New archaeological evidence, however, suggests a very different story. Far from being Buddhism’s last stop before the mountains, Jammu and Kashmir functioned as one of the gateways through which Buddhist ideas were shaped, refined and carried onwards to Central Asia and beyond.The recent excavation of a large Buddhist complex at Zehenpora in north Kashmir is more than a local archaeological discovery. It reopens a global historical question: How did Buddhism travel from the Indian subcontinent to Gandhara, Bactria and eventually China? Increasingly, the answer points to Jammu and Kashmir not as a passive recipient of ideas but as an active intellectual and monastic hub within trans-Asian networks of learning.This matters today because for last few decades Jammu and Kashmir’s past is often flattened into a single narrative of conflict. Archaeology tells another story, of a region that for centuries functioned as a crossroads of thought, belief and cultural exchange, where scholars, saints, monks, artisans and travellers helped shape one of the world’s great philosophical traditions.Until now, the dominant scholarly understanding of Buddhism’s movement beyond the Indian subcontinent has largely framed Jammu and Kashmir as a peripheral or transitional zone within a Silk Route narrative centered around Gandhara and Central Asia. This view relied primarily on Chinese, Tibetan and Indian textual sources, with limited archaeological evidence from Kashmir itself.Excavations at Harwan in the 1920s first placed Kashmir materially within the Kushana Buddhist world but the region continued to be viewed comparatively rather than as a generative centre. The ongoing excavation at Zehenpora has the potential to recalibrate this understanding by foregrounding Kashmir as an active monastic and intellectual hub embedded in trans-regional Buddhist networks.A discovery that began far from the valleyThe story of Zehenpora’s Buddhist site began not in the valley but with an archival photograph preserved in a French museum. The image showed three ancient stupas standing in Baramulla, suggesting that the unassuming mounds at Zehenpora might conceal something far more significant. This clue eventually led to a collaborative excavation in 2025 by the Jammu and Kashmir Department of Archives and Kashmir University, facilitated by India’s Ministry of Culture.Preliminary evidence indicates that the Zehenpora Buddhist complex dates to the Kushan period, between the first and third centuries CE. Archaeologists have identified the remains of a large stupa, structural foundations, pottery, copper artefacts and other relics, pointing to a well-organised monastic settlement embedded in wider Buddhist networks linking Kashmir to Gandhara.Archaeologists at the stupa mound at the Zehanpora archaeological site. Credit: Dr Ajmal Shah.Dr Ajmal Shah, Assistant Professor of Archaeology at the University of Kashmir and Director of the Zehenpora excavation, situates the site within these broader historical routes.The location of Zehenpora site on one of the ancient corridors connecting Kashmir region with Taxila and other parts of the subcontinent is itself an indicator that the site was on the crossroads. Infact the whole region of Baramulla has previously thrown light on the connections with many parts of neighbouring world. Given that the Xuan Zang has visited Baramulla, I am hopeful that the Zehenpora site will shed a fresh light on such contacts if the excavation continues.At the same time, Shah cautions against premature conclusions while underscoring the site’s significance.It would be too early to say anything with certainty about the diffusion of Buddhism and the role of Zehenpora. However, I am sure that given the huge area of the site and the amount of evidence we have already excavated, the site will prove to be one the richest archaeological sites in Kashmir valley and will for sure refine an understanding of Buddhism in Kashmir after a long time. The site is significant [for] having large aboveground intact mounds and the excavated apsidal stupa structure with many artefacts pointing towards major cultural phase of the ancient Kashmir.Reflecting on earlier interpretations, he adds:Kashmir’s role in the spread of Buddhism is generally understood through textual references from Chinese, Tibetan and Indian sources. Harwan excavations in 1920s brought the material culture within the Kushan period in Kashmir into context for the first time… Zehenpora site situated on the ancient route linking Kashmir with Gandhara and Central Asia would have naturally acted as one of the major hubs for transmission of Buddhism outside the geographical boundaries of Kashmir.In other words, Jammu and Kashmir was not merely absorbing ideas; it was helping transmit and refine them. Its role as a civilisational conduit stretches back millennia. At Burzahom near present-day Srinagar, Neolithic pit dwellings reveal carefully designed settlements adapted to harsh climatic conditions, underscoring that civilisation in Kashmir accumulated gradually through adaptation and exchange.By the Mauryan period, Kashmir had become a thriving centre of Buddhist learning. Monasteries and stupas attributed to Emperor Ashoka dotted the valley, while textual sources describe Kashmir as a land of scholarship, sometimes referred to as Sharada Pitha. During the Kushan period, royal patronage intensified. Tradition holds that Emperor Kanishka convened the Fourth Buddhist Council in Harwan, where Mahayana Buddhism was systematised under scholars such as Vasumitra and Ashvaghosha.From Kashmir, these ideas travelled onward to Gandhara, Kabul and Bactria. Material evidence, including the Gilgit manuscripts – among the oldest surviving Buddhist texts – further attests to the region’s role as a custodian of Buddhist knowledge.Buddhist sites in JammuThis layered history extends beyond the Kashmir Valley. Further south, in Akhnoor on the banks of the Chenab, sites such as Ambaran expand the picture. Professor Rajesh Sharma of the Department of Political Science at the University of Jammu situates the spread of Buddhism in the region within a much longer historical arc. His assessment draws on early Buddhist texts and Chinese pilgrim accounts, including works such as Early History of the Spread of Buddhism and the Buddhist Schools by N. Dutt and Thomas Watters’ On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, alongside Archaeological Survey of India excavation reports. He notes:Buddhism took inroads in the land of Madra, which included Jammu and its neighbourhood. According to the Theragatha and Therigatha, three prominent disciples of the Buddha hailed from the Madra desa.He notes that Buddhist propagation intensified during the Mauryan period.Later on, the task of propagating Buddhism was introduced in the Kashmir region, through the Jammu region, during the Mauryan ruler Ashoka’s rule in the 3rd century BCE. [That is also when] Majjhantika Thera [monk] and his team reached Kashmir.Archaeological evidence corroborates this continuity Prof Sharma refers to. Buddhism was introduced in Jammu in the pre-Kushana period. Excavations at the Buddhist site discovered at Ambaran in Akhnoor have revealed the brick foundations of a large stupa, monastery walls, terracotta figures, pottery and Kushana coins.Prof Sharma also highlights how Buddhism extended into the mountainous interiors of Kishtwar and Paddar, where it remains a living faith shaped by caravan trade routes and monastic mobility. It seems to be in flourishing state in Jammu. From the account of 7th century Chinese pilgrim Yunchwang, he found that several monasteries were constructed in Poonch and Rajauri.About Buddhism in Poonch, Yunchwang writes: “They (people of Punch) were sincere believers in Buddhism.” He further notes encountering a Crown Buddha statue placed within a Hindu temple in Rehi village of Ghagwal tehsil in Samba district, suggesting that the area may have come under Buddhist influence during the Kusana age, centuries before Tibetan Buddhism spread from the northeast and Brahmanical traditions from the Indian mainland, highlighting how Buddhist material culture survived within shared sacred landscapes.What makes Jammu and Kashmir’s past resistant to simplification is how older traditions intersected with later ones. Near the Ambaran Buddhist site stands the Sui Simbli temple, whose murals depict Hindu epics alongside Sikh gurus and the Bhakti saint Kabir. Alongside these stand Kashmir’s Sufi shrines and temples, from Sheikh Noor-ud-din’s dargah at Charar-e-Sharief to other centres where poetry, devotion and everyday life flowed together.Taken together, these sites tell a consistent story: this region functioned as a crossroads of belief systems where Shaivite, Buddhist, Vaishnavite, Bhakti, Sufi and later Sikh traditions intersected.Today, Jammu and Kashmir is often viewed narrowly through the lens of political conflict. Archaeology offers a corrective. Beneath the soil lies a history that resists modern simplifications, reminding us that pluralism and intellectual vitality are inherited legacies embedded in the region’s foundations. Read alongside Burzahom, Harwan, Ambaran and Sui Simbli, Zehenpora tells the story of a land where scholars and saints, monks and artisans, traders and mystics shaped ideas that travelled far beyond the valley.As Professor Kashab Sharma of the Department of History at Government Degree College Bishnah, Jammu, observes:Chinese pilgrims’ odysseys, Sanskrit paeans and Greco-Roman chronicles portray Buddhism’s majestic exodus to Central Asia as a Silk Road symphony, positioning Jammu and Kashmir as its periphery. The Zehenpora stupas revelation magnificently rewrite this: Jammu and Kashmir emerges as an exalted civilisational crossroads.Recognising this layered past is not an exercise in romanticisation. It is an act of historical honesty. Kashmir was never marginal to the currents of civilisation; it was a place where Buddhist thought was received, reshaped and transmitted onwards to Central Asia and China.Kanwal Singh is a columnist, writer, and scholar from Jammu and Kashmir.