English: Shanti Stupa is situated on a hilltop in Chanspa, Leh district, Ladakh, in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Shanti Stupa as know Buddhist white-domed stupa. It was built in 1991 by Japanese Buddhist Bhikshu Gyomyo Nakamura .The Shanti Stupa holds the relics of the Buddha at its base, enshrined by the 14th Dalai Lama himself.

To understand the stupa, we have to go way back in ancient Indian history. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself, died in the 5th century BCE. His followers were then left with a very important question: What do we do with his remains? At the time, burial mounds were commonly used to inter kings and other important figures. So, the Buddha's cremated remains were divided, with one portion traveling to each of the eight kingdoms in which he had resided. As a result, eight stupas were built, holding the Buddha's ashes and giving his followers a place to meet, meditate, and discuss their philosophies.

In the 3rd century BCE, the Emperor Ashoka became the first ruler of India's Mauryan Empire to convert to Buddhism. In order to spread Buddhism across the subcontinent, he had the eight original Buddhist stupas opened, and according to tradition, redistributed the remains amongst 84,000 communities while having stupas built for each of them. It was at this point that the Buddhist stupas became ubiquitous features of the Indian landscape.