The Great Stupa of Sanchi' was originally commissioned by the emperor:

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 2:
Ashoka The Great, the third emperor of the Mauryan Dynasty, is definitively credited with originally commissioning the Great Stupa at Sanchi in the 3rd century BCE. Sanchi is one of the oldest stone structures in India and a paramount monument of early Buddhist architecture. Ashoka, after his conversion to Buddhism, aimed to propagate the faith across his vast empire by constructing numerous stupas to house relics of the Buddha, and Sanchi was a key location for this mission. Although the stupa's famous elaborately carved gateways (toranas) and stone railings were added later, during the Sunga and Satavahana periods (1st century BCE), the foundation and initial hemispherical brick structure were unquestionably built under Ashoka's royal patronage.

The incorrect option is 1:
Kanishka was a renowned Kushan emperor whose reign is generally dated to the 2nd century CE, which is significantly later than the Maurya period foundation of Sanchi. While Kanishka was a monumental patron of Buddhism—even convening the Fourth Buddhist Council—he was not the founder of the Sanchi stupa. He is famous for commissioning a massive stupa in his capital, Purushapura (Peshawar), but Sanchi's origins lie much earlier in the Mauryan era.

The incorrect option is 3:
Harshvardhan, or King Harsha, was a major ruler of the Vardhana dynasty in the 7th century CE, over a thousand years after the Sanchi Stupa was first constructed. Though he was a liberal patron of Buddhism and his kingdom extended across parts of North India, his era is chronologically far too late to be associated with the original foundation of this ancient Mauryan monument.

The incorrect option is 4:
Chandragupt Vikramaditya refers to the great Gupta emperor Chandragupta II, who ruled around the 4th-5th century CE. This period saw the flourishing of art, but Sanchi had already been a major Buddhist center for centuries by then. The Gupta emperors did contribute to the Sanchi site by building temples, such as the famous Gupta Temple No. 17, but the original structure of the Great Stupa itself predates his reign by over six centuries.