Bairat Temple, Viratnagar

Bairat Temple is the remains of a freestanding Buddhist chaityagriha on Bijak-ki-Pahari, the 'Hill of the Inscription', about a mile south-west of Viratnagar in Rajasthan. Built in Ashoka's time in the 3rd century BCE, it is the earliest known Buddhist shrine with a circular plan, and two of Ashoka's Minor Rock Edicts were found nearby. One of them, the Calcutta-Bairat or Bhabru edict, found by Major Burt in 1840 and later moved to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, is the only edict to list Buddhist texts that Ashoka recommended for study.

Only the foundations survive. A small stupa, 1.6 m across, stood at the centre, ringed by 26 octagonal wooden columns and a lime-plastered brick wall, with an outer diameter of 5.6 m and two circular paths for circumambulation, all within a rectangular enclosure. On an upper platform are the remains of a monastery with single cells, and the site has also yielded pottery, lamps and fragments of Ashokan pillars.