A site in the Ganges Valley of northern India which was a great urban center in the early historical period. Its earliest wall, of mudbrick faced with baked brick 12 m high, was built about 500 BC. Within it is a Buddhist monastery the fifth century BC where, according to an inscription, the Buddha himself stayed for a time. Of the same period is a building interpreted as a palace, with walls of stone rubble. The site has provided important information about the origins and development of the Gangetic Iron Age urban civilization. The earliest levels contain pottery related to the Ochre Colored Pottery horizon and are dated to the mid-2nd millennium BC. The second level has black-and-red, red, gray, and black wares and iron objects also appear, in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. There was Northern Black Polished Ware in the third level of around 500 BC.