A torana is a freestanding ornamental gateway, typically consisting of two upright posts supporting one or more curved or straight horizontal crossbeams (architraves), built at the entrance to a stupa, temple or other sacred enclosure without forming part of any surrounding wall. Unlike a doorway cut into a wall, the torana stands independently, framing the path of approach rather than closing an opening, so passing beneath it is a symbolic act of crossing from ordinary space into a sacred precinct even where no physical wall or barrier accompanies the gateway at all.
The great stone toranas at the Buddhist stupa complex of Sanchi, dated to roughly the first century BCE and first century CE, are among the form's best preserved and most heavily studied early examples, their crossbeams and posts carved in dense relief with scenes from the Buddha's life told through symbols rather than his direct image, since figural representation of the Buddha himself had not yet become standard practice in Indian Buddhist art at that early date.
The torana form and its name traveled with Buddhism across Asia, most visibly surviving today in the Japanese torii, the gateway marking the entrance to a Shinto shrine, a structure whose name and basic two-post, crossbeam form are widely traced back to the Indian torana even though Shinto and Buddhism remain distinct traditions.