24-Feb-2020: 4,000 year old crafts village unearthed

A nearly 4,000-year-old urban settlement has been unearthed by a team of surveyors from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), which experts say could be one of the craft villages mentioned in ancient texts.

The University’s Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, did the preliminary survey of the site in Babhaniyav village which is about 13 km from Varanasi. The site at Babhaniyav could be a small sub-centre of Varanasi which grew as an urban town.

Such crafts villages have been earlier unearthed in Sarnath, Tilmapur, Ramnagar and other areas, Babhaniyav is an addition.

They have also found a pillar with a two-line text in Kushan-Brahmi script which makes the findings at least 3,500-4,000 years old.