MANIKYALA STUPA (THE GREAT TOPE) Archaeology, Relic Deposits, Numismatics, Epigraphy, Museum Provenance, and the Tradition-Associated Tooth-Relic Claim HIRR-2026-0030

The Manikyala Great Stupa is one of the most important nineteenth-century archaeological cases for the early study of Gandhāran Buddhism. Jean-Baptiste Ventura opened the monument in 1830, and James Prinsep subsequently published the coins, reliquaries, inscriptions, and chemical observations that made the site central to the emerging chronology of the Kushans. Modern British Museum records preserve a much more granular object chain than is often reflected in later summaries. They distinguish an upper deposit, a middle deposit, and a deep foundation deposit; identify separate copper-alloy and gold reliquaries; link specific Kushan and later coins to specific levels; and preserve traces of cloth, wax, amber-like material, twine, and the historically famous brown liquid. The present study was activated because a 2026 institutional case file and certificate proposed an archival correlation between Manikyala and a tradition-associated Buddha Tooth Relic presently safeguarded in Myanmar. That claim is important, but it must be tested at the level of each evidential link. The inspected primary and museum sources securely establish Ventura's excavation, the nested container system, the coin associations, inscribed objects, repeated deposit events, and a later history of museum acquisition. They do not, on their own, establish that a particular recovered object was anatomically identified as a tooth, nor do they establish an excavation-to-Myanmar chain of custody for the separately safeguarded specimen. Prinsep's analysis of the brown liquid is historically significant because it reported phosphate of lime and other features interpreted as indicating animal remains, but this remains a nineteenth-century chemical observation, not a modern dental identification. The monograph therefore reaches a differentiated conclusion. Manikyala is strongly documented as a multi-phase Buddhist relic monument with securely catalogued archaeological reliquaries and associated numismatic and epigraphic evidence. A broader tradition of bodily relic deposition is historically plausible within the site's ritual setting. The specific proposition that the Myanmar specimen is a tooth excavated by Ventura at Manikyala remains a correlation hypothesis requiring an object-level provenance bridge and competent material identification. The study preserves the devotional importance of the tradition while refusing to let reverence substitute for archaeological, biological, or custodial evidence. Keywords Manikyala; Mankiala; Gandhāra; stūpa; Jean-Baptiste Ventura; James Prinsep; Kushan; Kanishka; Huvishka; reliquary; Kharoṣṭhī; Gomaṇa; relic deposit; brown liquid; Buddhist relics; tooth relic; museum provenance; British Museum; HIRR; IRCM.