ASI resumes Dronasagar dig in Kashipur; Shunga-Kushan brick found

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has resumed excavation at the Dronasagar mound in Kashipur, in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district, a site that local tradition links to Guru Dronacharya, the teacher of the Pandavas and Kauravas in the Mahabharata. In remarks reported on 25 October 2026, Mohan Chandra Joshi, Superintending Archaeologist (In-Charge) of the ASI's Dehradun Circle, said about 20 to 25 days of digging had been completed so far, with some breaks for rain. Early finds include a small brick of the Shunga-Kushan period and a circular brick structure that the team is provisionally treating as a well.

Dronasagar sits at the meeting point of two ways of knowing the past. According to local tradition, the tank and mound mark the place where Dronacharya taught the princes of the epic. Archaeology asks a different question: what did people actually build, use and leave behind here, and when. The ASI's stated aim keeps these apart. The team is not setting out to prove the legend; it is setting out to record every layer of occupation, from the earliest to the latest, and let the dating speak.

That is why the goal of reaching natural soil matters. A mound like this grows over centuries as people build, abandon and rebuild. Each layer holds pottery, bricks and other objects that can be dated by their style and, where possible, by scientific methods. Digging through all of them gives a "cultural sequence", a timeline of who lived at the site and how their lives changed. Without the lowest layers, any claim about the site's age remains open.

The pottery already on record shows why the site draws interest. Painted Grey Ware is a style of fine grey pottery with black painted designs found across the Ganga-Yamuna plains and the wider north. Its presence is one reason the site is discussed alongside the epic, but archaeologists stress that finding remains of a particular culture does not by itself confirm that a specific event or person from the epic existed. Shunga-Kushan material, by contrast, belongs to the centuries around the turn of the Common Era, and Gupta-period construction comes later still, showing that the site was used over a very long span.

The site also has a place in written history. Historians link Kashipur to Govishana, the name by which it was known in the time of King Harsha (606-647 CE), and the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham identified it with a place described in the travel accounts of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang. The ASI had earlier been reported to be preparing a plan to develop the 90-acre site for research and tourism.

Short-term: The dig will continue through the coming months, and the circular structure will be exposed fully to confirm whether it is a well and from which period it comes.

Long-term: A full cultural sequence from top to natural soil would give the first complete timeline of Govishan Tila. That would help historians place Kashipur in the history of the Uttarakhand Terai, and give any future research and tourism plan a firm base in evidence.

Who is affected: Archaeologists and historians of early northern India; students of Indian knowledge traditions; the people of Kashipur, for whom the site is part of local identity; and pilgrims and tourists who visit Dronasagar.

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