Buddhist stupa "Zurmalа" (1st–3rd century)

In the early second century the Kushan kingdom was ruled by Kanishka I, under whom it reached its height. His reign saw the Fourth Buddhist Council, at which the thinker Nagarjuna established the foundations of Mahayana — the later Buddhism addressed not only to ascetic monks but to ordinary people living by the law and doing good. Where Gautama's teaching had remained the concern of philosophers and hermits, Buddhism now became intelligible to everyone, and roadside temples open to peasant and merchant alike went up across Asia.

From that era, the first to third centuries, comes a monument twelve kilometres from present-day Termez, at the south-east of the Old Termez site — the Zurmala stupa. It is now a tower fourteen metres high, of square mud brick about thirty-three centimetres to a side, stamped in the manner typical of Kushan times: a line and two dimples. Archaeologists have calculated that 1,200,000 bricks went into it.

The stupa's spherical form recalls a burial mound and stands for the parinirvana, the passing of the Buddha. In the first years after his death stupas were something like houses of the deity: a lock of hair, a scrap of clothing or a relic was placed in a cubic casket, the casket set on the summit and covered with the Auspicious Parasol, which shelters from misfortune. Worshippers walked a ritual circuit around the stupa.

Zurmala consisted of a rectangular base 22 by 16 metres and a cylindrical body 14.5 metres across. A stair led up to the platform for circumambulation, and the transition from brickwork to the spherical crown can still be made out. The base was faced with marly limestone, and fired brick was used for decoration. Whether the stupa stood alone or adjoined a temple complex is still unknown.