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Coordinates: 23°32′11.0″N 77°46′20″E / 23.536389°N 77.77222°E / 23.536389; 77.77222
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Udayagiri, literally means the 'sunrise mountain'.<ref name="PierisRaven2010p230">{{cite book|author1=Sita Pieris|author2=Ellen Raven|title=ABIA: South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index: Volume Three – South Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fCL8pjd0JVMC |year=2010|publisher=BRILL Academic|isbn=90-04-19148-8|pages=230–231}}</ref> Udayagiri and Vidisha were a [[Buddhist]] and [[Krishna|Bhagavata]] site by the 2nd century BCE as evidenced by the [[Heliodorus pillar]]. While the Heliodorus pillar has been preserved, others have survived in ruins. Buddhism was prominent in Sanchi, near Udayagiri, in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE. According to Dass and Willis, recent archaeological evidence such as the Udayagiri Lion Capital suggests that there was a Sun Temple at Udayagiri. The Surya tradition in Udayagiri dates at least from the 2nd century BCE, and possibly one that predated the arrival of Buddhism. It is this tradition that gives it the 'sunrise mountain' name.<ref name=dass25>{{cite journal|author1=Meera Dass |author2 = Michael Willis| title= The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India| journal= South Asian Studies| volume = 18| year= 2002| pages=25-45}}</ref>
Udayagiri, literally means the 'sunrise mountain'.<ref name="PierisRaven2010p230">{{cite book|author1=Sita Pieris|author2=Ellen Raven|title=ABIA: South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index: Volume Three – South Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fCL8pjd0JVMC |year=2010|publisher=BRILL Academic|isbn=90-04-19148-8|pages=230–231}}</ref> Udayagiri and Vidisha were a [[Buddhist]] and [[Krishna|Bhagavata]] site by the 2nd century BCE as evidenced by the [[Heliodorus pillar]]. While the Heliodorus pillar has been preserved, others have survived in ruins. Buddhism was prominent in Sanchi, near Udayagiri, in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE. According to Dass and Willis, recent archaeological evidence such as the Udayagiri Lion Capital suggests that there was a Sun Temple at Udayagiri. The Surya tradition in Udayagiri dates at least from the 2nd century BCE, and possibly one that predated the arrival of Buddhism. It is this tradition that gives it the 'sunrise mountain' name.<ref name=dass25>{{cite journal|author1=Meera Dass |author2 = Michael Willis| title= The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India| journal= South Asian Studies| volume = 18| year= 2002| pages=25-45}}</ref>


The town is referred to as Udaygiri or Udaigiri in some texts.{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}} The site is also referred to as Visnupadagiri, as in inscriptions at the site. The term means the hill at "the feet of Viṣṇu'.<ref>{{cite book | last=Balasubramaniam | first=R. | title=Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures | editor= Helaine Selin| chapter=Iron Pillar at Delhi | publisher=Springer Netherlands | isbn=978-1-4020-4559-2 | doi=10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8658 | pages=1131–1136}}</ref><ref>M. Willis, ‘Inscriptions from Udayagiri: Locating Domains of Devotion, Patronage and Power in the Eleventh Century’, ''South Asian Studies'' 17 (2001): 41-53.</ref>{{refn|group=note|The term Visnupadagiri occurs in the ''Mahabharata'', and has been variously interpreted to mean sites in Kashmir, Anga or other regions.<ref name="Brockington1998p202">{{cite book|author=J. L. Brockington|title=The Sanskrit Epics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HR-_LK5kl18C&pg=PA202 |year=1998| publisher=BRILL Academic|isbn=90-04-10260-4|pages=202–203}}</ref>}}
The town is also referred to as Udaygiri or Udaigiri in some texts.{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}}


==Location==
==Location==
Line 47: Line 47:
The site at Udayagiri Caves was the patronage of Chandragupta II, who ruled the Gupta Empire between c. 380 and 413/415 CE.
The site at Udayagiri Caves was the patronage of Chandragupta II, who ruled the Gupta Empire between c. 380 and 413/415 CE.


Some historians have suggested that the [[iron pillar of Delhi|iron pillar]] at [[Delhi]] originally stood at Udayagiri.<ref>R. Balasubramaniam, ‘Identity of Chandra and Vishnupadagiri of the Delhi Iron Pillar Inscription: Numismatic, Archaeological and Literary Evidence’, ''Bulletin of Metals Museum'' 32 (2000): 42-64; Balasubramaniam and Meera I. Dass, ‘Estimation of the Original Erection Site of the Delhi Iron Pillar at Udayagiri’, ''IJHS'' 39.1 (2004): 51-74; ibidem., ‘On the Astronomical Significance of the Delhi Iron Pillar’, ''Current Science'' 86 (2004): 1135-42.</ref> If true, the inscription on the pillar shows that Udayagiri was called Viṣṇupadagiri, the 'hill of Viṣṇu's foot-prints' in the fifth century CE. This is supported by an inscription in one of the Udayagiri caves (Cave 19) reporting that the devotee who repaired the shrine 'bows forever to the feet of Viṣṇu'.<ref>M. Willis, ‘Inscriptions from Udayagiri: Locating Domains of Devotion, Patronage and Power in the Eleventh Century’, ''South Asian Studies'' 17 (2001): 41-53.</ref>
Some historians have suggested that the [[iron pillar of Delhi|iron pillar]] at [[Delhi]] originally stood at Udayagiri.<ref>M.I. Dass and R. Balasubramanium (2004), Estimation of the original erection site of the Delhi Iron Pillar at Udayagiri, Indian Journal of History of Science, Volume 39, Issue 1, pages 51-54, context: 51-74</ref><ref>R. Balasubramaniam, ‘Identity of Chandra and Vishnupadagiri of the Delhi Iron Pillar Inscription: Numismatic, Archaeological and Literary Evidence’, ''Bulletin of Metals Museum'' 32 (2000): 42-64; Balasubramaniam and Meera I. Dass, ‘On the Astronomical Significance of the Delhi Iron Pillar’, ''Current Science'' 86 (2004): 1135-42.</ref> If true, the inscription on the pillar shows that Udayagiri was called Viṣṇupadagiri, the 'hill of Viṣṇu's foot-prints' in the fifth century CE. This is supported by an inscription in one of the Udayagiri caves (Cave 19) reporting that the devotee who repaired the shrine 'bows forever to the feet of Viṣṇu'.<ref>M. Willis, ‘Inscriptions from Udayagiri: Locating Domains of Devotion, Patronage and Power in the Eleventh Century’, ''South Asian Studies'' 17 (2001): 41-53.</ref>


===Archaeological scholarship===
===Archaeological scholarship===
The Udayagiri Caves were first studied in depth and reported by [[Alexander Cunningham]] in the 1870s.<ref name=dass25/> His site and iconography-related report appeared in Volume 10 of ''Tour Reports'' published by the Archaeological Survey of India, while the inscriptions and drawings of the Lion Capital at the site appeared in Volume 1 of the ''Corpus Inscriptionum Indicum''. His comments that Udayagiri is an exclusively Hinduism and Jainism-related site, it being close to the Buddhist site of Sanchi and the Bhagavata-related [[Heliodorus pillar]], and his dating parts of the site to between 2nd century BCE and early 5th century CE brought it to scholarly attention.<ref name=dass25/>{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}}
The Udayagiri Caves were first studied in depth and reported by [[Alexander Cunningham]] in the 1870s.<ref name=dass25/> His site and iconography-related report appeared in Volume 10 of ''Tour Reports'' published by the Archaeological Survey of India, while the inscriptions and drawings of the Lion Capital at the site appeared in Volume 1 of the ''Corpus Inscriptionum Indicum''. His comments that Udayagiri is an exclusively Hinduism and Jainism-related site, it being close to the Buddhist site of Sanchi and the Bhagavata-related [[Heliodorus pillar]], and his dating parts of the site to between 2nd century BCE and early 5th century CE brought it to scholarly attention.<ref name=dass25/>{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}}


The discovery appealed the prevailing conjecture about rise and fall of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, the hypothesis that Buddhist art influenced Hindu and Jaina arts, and that Hindus may have built their monuments by reusing Buddhist ones or on top of Buddhist ones. Cunningham presumed that the broken Lion Capital at the Udayagiri Caves may be an evidence for these, and he categorized Udayagiri as originally a Buddist site converted into a Hindu and Jaina one by "Brahmanical prosecutors".<ref name=dass25/>{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}} However, nothing in or around the cave looked Buddhist, and it did not explain why these "Brahmanical prosecutors" did not demolish the nearby bigger Sanchi site.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Meera Dass |author2 = Michael Willis| title= The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India| journal= South Asian Studies| volume = 18| year= 2002| pages=31-32 with footnote 31 on page 43}}</ref> The working hypothesis then became that the Lion Capital platform stood on a Buddhist stupa, and that if excavations were done in and around the Udayagiri Caves hills then the evidence will emerge. Such an excavation was completed and reported by archaeologists Lake and Bhandarkar in early 1910s. No evidence was found.<ref name=dass25/><ref>HH Lake (1910), ''Besnagar'', Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 23, pages 135-145</ref><ref name="Shaw2013p21"/> Bhandarkar, a strong proponent of the 'Buddhist converted to Hindu' site hypothesis, went further with excavations. He, state Dass and Willis, went so far as "to ransack the platform" at the Udayagiri Caves site, in an effort "to find the stupa he was certain lay below".<ref name=dass25/> However, after an exhaustive search, his team failed to find anything underneath the platform or nearby that was even vaguely Buddhist.<ref name=dass25/>
The early Udayagiri Caves reports appealed to the prevailing conjecture about the rise and fall of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, the hypothesis that Buddhist art influenced Hindu and Jaina arts, and that Hindus may have built their monuments by reusing Buddhist ones or on top of Buddhist ones. Cunningham presumed that the broken Lion Capital at the Udayagiri Caves may be an evidence for these, and he categorized Udayagiri as originally a Buddist site converted into a Hindu and Jaina one by "Brahmanical prosecutors".<ref name=dass25/>{{sfn|Cunningham|1880|pp=46-53}} However, nothing in or around the cave looked Buddhist, no Buddhist inscriptions or texts supported this, and it did not explain why these "Brahmanical prosecutors" did not demolish the nearby bigger Sanchi site.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Meera Dass |author2 = Michael Willis| title= The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India| journal= South Asian Studies| volume = 18| year= 2002| pages=31-32 with footnote 31 on page 43}}</ref> The working hypothesis then became that the Lion Capital platform stood on a Buddhist stupa, and that if excavations were done in and around the Udayagiri Caves hills then the evidence will emerge. Such an excavation was completed and reported by archaeologists Lake and Bhandarkar in early 1910s. No evidence was found.<ref name=dass25/><ref>HH Lake (1910), ''Besnagar'', Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 23, pages 135-145</ref><ref name="Shaw2013p21"/> Bhandarkar, a strong proponent of the 'Buddhist converted to Hindu' site hypothesis, went further with excavations. He, state Dass and Willis, went so far as "to ransack the platform" at the Udayagiri Caves site, in an effort "to find the stupa he was certain lay below".<ref name=dass25/> However, after an exhaustive search, his team failed to find anything underneath the platform or nearby that was even vaguely Buddhist.<ref name=dass25/> The archaeological excavation in the 1910s, however, yielded unexpected results in the form of buried inscriptions that confirmed that Vasudeva-Bhagavatism (Vaishnavism) was influential by the 2nd century BCE and by linking the Udayagiri-Besnagar-Vidisha region politically and religiously to ancient [[Taxila]].<ref name="Shaw2013p21"/>


In the 1960s, a team led by archaeologist Khare revisited a broader region, at seven mounds, which included the nearby Besnagar and Vidisha. The excavation data and results were never published, except for summaries in 1964 and 1965. No new evidence was found, but the layers excavated suggested that the site was a significant town already by 6th-century BCE, and a likely a major city by the 3rd-century BCE.<ref name="Shaw2013p21"/>
In the 1960s, a team led by archaeologist Khare revisited a broader region, at seven mounds, which included the nearby Besnagar and Vidisha. The excavation data and results were never published, except for summaries in 1964 and 1965. No new evidence was found, but the layers excavated suggested that the site was a significant town already by 6th-century BCE, and a likely a major city by the 3rd-century BCE.<ref name="Shaw2013p21"/>

Revision as of 02:52, 9 December 2017

Template:Distinguish2

Udayagiri Caves
Udayagiri, Cave 5, general view
Udayagiri, Cave 5, Viṣṇu as the Varāha Avatar, general view
Religion
AffiliationHinduism, Jainism
DistrictVidisha district
DeityVishnu, Shakti, Shiva, Parshvanatha, others
Location
LocationUdayagiri, Vidisha
StateMadhya Pradesh
CountryIndia
Udayagiri Caves is located in India
Udayagiri Caves
Shown within India
Udayagiri Caves is located in Madhya Pradesh
Udayagiri Caves
Udayagiri Caves (Madhya Pradesh)
Geographic coordinates23°32′11.0″N 77°46′20″E / 23.536389°N 77.77222°E / 23.536389; 77.77222
Architecture
Completedc. 250-410 CE
A relief on the cave wall.

The Udayagiri Caves are twenty rock-cut caves near Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh from the early years of the 5th century CE.[1][2] They contain some of the oldest surviving Hindu temples and iconography in India.[1][3][4] They are the only site that can be verifiably associated with a Gupta period monarch from its inscriptions.[5] One of India's most important archaeological sites, the Udayagiri hills and its caves are protected monuments managed by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Udayagiri caves contain iconography of Vaishnavism (Vishnu), Shaktism (Durga and Matrikas) and Shaivism (Shiva).[6][5] They are notable for the ancient monumental relief sculpture of Vishnu in his incarnation as the man-boar Varaha, rescuing the earth symbolically represented by Bhudevi clinging to the boar's tusk as described in Hindu mythology.[3] The site has important inscriptions of the Gupta dynasty belonging to the reigns of Chandragupta II (c. 375-415) and Kumaragupta I (c. 415-55).[7] In addition to these, Udayagiri has a series of rock-shelters and petroglyphs, ruined buildings, inscriptions, water systems, fortifications and habitation mounds, all of which have been only partially investigated. The complex consists of twenty caves, of which one is dedicated to Jainism and all others to Hinduism.[4] The Jain cave is notable for one of the oldest known Jaina inscriptions from 272 CE.[6]

There are a number of places in India with the same name, the most notable being the mountain called Udayagiri at Rajgir in Bihar and the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves in Odisha.[6]

Etymology

The lion capital is significant in its design, the octagonal base the lion sits on, and the animals carved on the eight sides: a bull, an elephant, a gaur, a tiger with wings, two winged creatures, a horse and a double-humped camel. This sat on a pillar.

Udayagiri, literally means the 'sunrise mountain'.[9] Udayagiri and Vidisha were a Buddhist and Bhagavata site by the 2nd century BCE as evidenced by the Heliodorus pillar. While the Heliodorus pillar has been preserved, others have survived in ruins. Buddhism was prominent in Sanchi, near Udayagiri, in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE. According to Dass and Willis, recent archaeological evidence such as the Udayagiri Lion Capital suggests that there was a Sun Temple at Udayagiri. The Surya tradition in Udayagiri dates at least from the 2nd century BCE, and possibly one that predated the arrival of Buddhism. It is this tradition that gives it the 'sunrise mountain' name.[2]

The town is referred to as Udaygiri or Udaigiri in some texts.[6] The site is also referred to as Visnupadagiri, as in inscriptions at the site. The term means the hill at "the feet of Viṣṇu'.[10][11][note 1]

Location

Udayagiri Caves are set in two low hills near Betwa River, on the banks of its tributary Bes River.[2] This is an isolated ridge about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) long, running from southeast to northwest, rising to about 350 feet (110 m) height. The hill is rocky and consists of horizontal layers of white sandstone, a material common in the region.[13] They are about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) west of the town of Vidisha, about 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) northeast of the Buddhist site of Sanchi, and 60 kilometres (37 mi) northeast of Bhopal.[14] The site is connected to the capital Bhopal by a highway. Bhopal is the nearest major railway station and airport with regular services.

Udayagiri is slightly north of the current Tropic of Cancer, but over a millennium ago it would have been nearer and directly on it. Udayagiri residents must have seen the sun directly overhead on the Summer solstice day, and this likely played a role in the sacred of this site for the Hindus.[2][note 2]

History

The site at Udayagiri Caves was the patronage of Chandragupta II, who ruled the Gupta Empire between c. 380 and 413/415 CE.

Some historians have suggested that the iron pillar at Delhi originally stood at Udayagiri.[15][16] If true, the inscription on the pillar shows that Udayagiri was called Viṣṇupadagiri, the 'hill of Viṣṇu's foot-prints' in the fifth century CE. This is supported by an inscription in one of the Udayagiri caves (Cave 19) reporting that the devotee who repaired the shrine 'bows forever to the feet of Viṣṇu'.[17]

Archaeological scholarship

The Udayagiri Caves were first studied in depth and reported by Alexander Cunningham in the 1870s.[2] His site and iconography-related report appeared in Volume 10 of Tour Reports published by the Archaeological Survey of India, while the inscriptions and drawings of the Lion Capital at the site appeared in Volume 1 of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicum. His comments that Udayagiri is an exclusively Hinduism and Jainism-related site, it being close to the Buddhist site of Sanchi and the Bhagavata-related Heliodorus pillar, and his dating parts of the site to between 2nd century BCE and early 5th century CE brought it to scholarly attention.[2][6]

The early Udayagiri Caves reports appealed to the prevailing conjecture about the rise and fall of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, the hypothesis that Buddhist art influenced Hindu and Jaina arts, and that Hindus may have built their monuments by reusing Buddhist ones or on top of Buddhist ones. Cunningham presumed that the broken Lion Capital at the Udayagiri Caves may be an evidence for these, and he categorized Udayagiri as originally a Buddist site converted into a Hindu and Jaina one by "Brahmanical prosecutors".[2][6] However, nothing in or around the cave looked Buddhist, no Buddhist inscriptions or texts supported this, and it did not explain why these "Brahmanical prosecutors" did not demolish the nearby bigger Sanchi site.[18] The working hypothesis then became that the Lion Capital platform stood on a Buddhist stupa, and that if excavations were done in and around the Udayagiri Caves hills then the evidence will emerge. Such an excavation was completed and reported by archaeologists Lake and Bhandarkar in early 1910s. No evidence was found.[2][19][20] Bhandarkar, a strong proponent of the 'Buddhist converted to Hindu' site hypothesis, went further with excavations. He, state Dass and Willis, went so far as "to ransack the platform" at the Udayagiri Caves site, in an effort "to find the stupa he was certain lay below".[2] However, after an exhaustive search, his team failed to find anything underneath the platform or nearby that was even vaguely Buddhist.[2] The archaeological excavation in the 1910s, however, yielded unexpected results in the form of buried inscriptions that confirmed that Vasudeva-Bhagavatism (Vaishnavism) was influential by the 2nd century BCE and by linking the Udayagiri-Besnagar-Vidisha region politically and religiously to ancient Taxila.[20]

In the 1960s, a team led by archaeologist Khare revisited a broader region, at seven mounds, which included the nearby Besnagar and Vidisha. The excavation data and results were never published, except for summaries in 1964 and 1965. No new evidence was found, but the layers excavated suggested that the site was a significant town already by 6th-century BCE, and a likely a major city by the 3rd-century BCE.[20]

Willis and other scholars revisited the site in early 2000s. Once again no Buddhist evidence was found at the Udayagiri Caves, but more artifacts related to Hinduism and Jainism. According to Julia Shaw, the evidence collected so far has led to a "major revision" about presumptions about the Udayagiri Caves archaeological site as well as the wider archaeological landscape of this region.[20] Willis and team have proposed that, perhaps Udayagiri was a Hindu and Jaina site all along, and that the evidence collected so far suggests that the Saura tradition of Hinduism may have preceded the arrival of Buddhism in this region.[2][6][note 3]

Description

Udayagiri temples feature square plans.

The caves at Udayagiri were numbered in the nineteenth century from south to north by Alexander Cunningham but a more detailed system was introduced by the Department of Archaeology, Gwalior State.[22] Due to the changes, the exact numbering sequence is debated, in part because many of the caves are little more than shallow niches or empty chambers. Most visitors will be interested in the sculptures, architecture and inscriptions found at Caves 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 13, the numbering of which is now generally accepted.

Cave 1

Cave 1, the only substantial residue on the southern part of Udayagiri hill, has a frontage adapted out of a natural ledge of rock, thus forming both the root of the cave and its portico. The row of four pillars bear the ‘vase and foliage’ pattern.

Cave 3 : Dedicated to Skanda

Udayagiri, Cave 4, Śiva liṅga

Cave 3 is the first of the central group or cluster of shrines and reliefs. It consists of an irregularly finished cella with a plain entrance. Traces of two pilasters are seen on both sides of the entrance and there is a deep horizontal cutting above which shows that there was some sort of portico in front of the shrine. Inside there is a rock-cut image of Kārttikeya or Skanda, the war god, on a monolithic plinth. The mouldings and spout of the plinth are now damaged. The figure, with an impressive muscular torso, stands with his weight equally on both legs; one of the hands holds the remains of a staff or club. The broad square face is typical of the early fifth-century style of figural sculpture.[23]

Cave 4 : Dedicated to Śiva in the form of a liṅga

Cave 4 has a rectangular cella with a rock-cut plinth in which is set a spectacular Śiva linga. The hair is tied up into a topknot with long locks cascading down each side. The arrangement of the hair recalls the story of how Śiva broke the fall of the River Gaṅgā as the waters came down from heaven. There is a water channel in the plinth and in the floor of the chamber leading to a hole that pierces in the cave wall. The cave is entered through an entrance of exquisite proportions with delicately carved floral scrolls. The lintel of the door extends beyond the jambs to create a T-shape, a common characteristic of early temple architecture. Unlike most doors, however, the frame consists only of square moulding, identical on the top and sides. The base of the jambs and the sill are modern replacements. Externally, the cave is flanked by rock-cut pilasters and two guardians (dvārapāla) now damaged and weather-worn.[citation needed]

Cave 5: Varāha

Vishnu as man-boar avatar in Cave 5, the rescued goddess earth on his tusk.

Cave 5 is a shallow niche more than a cave and contains the much-celebrated figure of Viṣṇu in his Varāha or Boar-headed incarnation. The complex iconography of the tableau has been explained by Debala Mitra.[24] Willis has described the relief as the "iconographic centre-piece of Udayagiri".[25]

Cave 6

Cave 6 is directly beside Cave 5 and consists of rock-cut cella entered through an elaborate T-shaped door. The original image inside is missing but it was probably a Śiva liṅga. Outside the cave is a panel with an inscription recording the creation of the 'meritorious gift' (deyadharma), probably the cave and the adjacent images, in Gupta year 82 (401 CE).[26] In the ceiling of the cave is an undated pilgrim record of somebody named Śivāditya.[27]

Cave 6 Shakti Durga as Mahishasura-mardini.

The door guardians flanking the entrance are regarded by art historians as among the most powerful works of early Gupta sculpture. Beside them, on either side, are figures of Viṣṇu and of Śiva Gaṅgādhāra, the latter much worn from the falling of water over the image. Of special note is Durgā slaying the Buffalo Demon, one of the earliest representations of the theme in India.[28] Of special note also is the figure of seated Gaṇeśa, to the left of the cave entrance, and the rectangular niche with seated goddesses, located to the right. Aside from this being the oldest datable Gaṇeśa in India, the arrangement, with a guarded sanctum in the centre, Gaṇeśa on one side and the mother goddesses on the other, presages the arrangement of temple space in subsequent centuries.[29]

Cave 7 : Dedicated to the Mother Goddesses

Cave 7 is located a few steps east of Cave 6. It consists of a large niche containing damaged figures of the mother goddess, each with a weapon above their head, carved on the back wall of the cave. The cave is flanked by shallow niches with abraded figures of Kārttikeya and Gaṇeśa, now visible only in outline.

Cave 8 : Dedicated to Śiva by the king's minister Vīrasena

Cave 8 is slightly to the north and east of the Cave 6 cluster. It is excavated into a dome-shaped rock surmounted by massive horizontal slab. The curious form was created by the natural erosion of the rock over time (the ashlar supports of the slab were added sometime in the 1930s by the Department of Archaeology, Gwalior State). Two abraded figures guard the entrance to the inner chamber. Inside, the cave is empty apart from a lotus carved in the ceiling and a damaged inscription on the back wall. The inscription is a record of great historical importance. It states, in anuṣṭubh verse, that the work was composed by Vīrasena, the king's minister, and that he had come here (iha, i.e. Udayagiri) in the company of Chandragupta II who was engaged in a campaign of world conquest.[30] Amongst all the Gupta inscriptions and antiquities, this is the only record that documents the actual presence of a Gupta king at a particular place.

The Passage

The Sanskrit inscriptions in Udayagiri caves.

A passage starts beside Cave 8. It consists of a natural cleft or canyon in the rock running approximately east to west. The passage has been subject to series of modifications and additions, the sets of steps cut into the floor being the most conspicuous feature. The lowest set of steps on the right hand side is visibly water-worn and evidently served as a water-cascade in historic times. Shell inscriptions (so-called by modern epigraphy specialists because of their shell-like shape) engraved on the upper walls of the passage are the largest examples of this kind of writing known in India. The images of the fifth century cut through the Sankha Lipi indicating they pre-date Gupta times. The inscriptions, which appear to be names in Sanskrit, had not been fully deciphered until recently.[31] The upper walls of the passage have large notches at several places, indicating that stone beams and slabs were used to roof over parts of the passage, giving it a significantly different appearance from what can be seen today. In terms of sculpture, the passage has a series of niches and caves, numbered 9 through 14. Only a few contain sculptures, mostly of standing Viṣṇu, all of which are damaged.

Cave 12

Cave 12 consists of a niche containing a standing figure of Narasimha or Nṛsiṃha, Viṣṇu in his 'Lion-man' incarnation. Below on either side are two small standing attendant figures. The images cut through a shell character about two meters in height. In the floor below Nṛsiṃha there is a short Brahmī inscription.

Udayagiri, Cave 13, detail of the recumbent figure of Nārāyaṇa

Cave 13 : Sleeping Nārāyaṇa

Cave 13 contains a large figure of Nārāyaṇa, the recumbent figure of Viṣṇu resting.

Beside the image of Nārāyaṇa is a kneeling devotee, and it has been argued that this figure is a depiction of Chandragupta II himself, symbolising his devotion to Viṣṇu.[32]

Cave 14

Cave 14, the last cave on the left hand side at the top of the passage. It consists of a recessed square chamber of which only two sides are preserved. The outline of the chamber is visible in the floor, with a water channel pierced through the wall on one side as in the other caves at the site. One side of the doorjamb is preserved, showing jambs with receding faces but without any relief carving.

Cave 20 : Jain Cave

Inscription in the Jaina cave 20.

Cave 20 is the only cave Udayagiri Caves that is dedicated to Jainism. The cave is rich with Jain carvings and sculptures.

Significance

Archaeologist Michael D. Willis states that Chandragupta II reworked these caves to reflect a new concept of Hindu kingship, in which the monarch was seen as both the paramount sovereign (cakravartin) and the supreme devotee of the god Vișņu (paramabhāgavata).[33]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The term Visnupadagiri occurs in the Mahabharata, and has been variously interpreted to mean sites in Kashmir, Anga or other regions.[12]
  2. ^ The tropic of cancer has been shifting south on a cycle of about 41,000 years. See Circle of latitude#Movement of the Tropical and Polar circles.
  3. ^ The original theory that there may be Buddhist remains below the Udayagiri temples remains active, state Dass and Willis, and the search for "Buddhist remains is still going on".[21]

References

  1. ^ a b Upinder Singh (2008). A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Pearson. p. 533. ISBN 978-81-317-1120-0.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Meera Dass; Michael Willis (2002). "The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India". South Asian Studies. 18: 25–45.
  3. ^ a b Fred Kleiner (2012), Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Global History, Cengage, ISBN 978-0495915423, page 434
  4. ^ a b Margaret Prosser Allen (1992), Ornament in Indian Architecture, University of Delaware Press, ISBN 978-0874133998, pages 128-129
  5. ^ a b James C. Harle (1974). Gupta sculpture: Indian sculpture of the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D. Clarendon Press, Oxford. pp. 7–9.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Cunningham 1880, pp. 46–53.
  7. ^ The inscriptions are dealt with in J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888), hereinafter CII 3 (1888); for another version and interpretation: D. R. Bhandarkar et al, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (revised) (New Delhi, 1981).
  8. ^ British Library Online
  9. ^ Sita Pieris; Ellen Raven (2010). ABIA: South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index: Volume Three – South Asia. BRILL Academic. pp. 230–231. ISBN 90-04-19148-8.
  10. ^ Balasubramaniam, R. "Iron Pillar at Delhi". In Helaine Selin (ed.). Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer Netherlands. pp. 1131–1136. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8658. ISBN 978-1-4020-4559-2.
  11. ^ M. Willis, ‘Inscriptions from Udayagiri: Locating Domains of Devotion, Patronage and Power in the Eleventh Century’, South Asian Studies 17 (2001): 41-53.
  12. ^ J. L. Brockington (1998). The Sanskrit Epics. BRILL Academic. pp. 202–203. ISBN 90-04-10260-4.
  13. ^ Cunningham 1880, pp. 46–47.
  14. ^ A. Ghosh, An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, 2 vols. New Delhi, 1989: s.v. Besnagar.
  15. ^ M.I. Dass and R. Balasubramanium (2004), Estimation of the original erection site of the Delhi Iron Pillar at Udayagiri, Indian Journal of History of Science, Volume 39, Issue 1, pages 51-54, context: 51-74
  16. ^ R. Balasubramaniam, ‘Identity of Chandra and Vishnupadagiri of the Delhi Iron Pillar Inscription: Numismatic, Archaeological and Literary Evidence’, Bulletin of Metals Museum 32 (2000): 42-64; Balasubramaniam and Meera I. Dass, ‘On the Astronomical Significance of the Delhi Iron Pillar’, Current Science 86 (2004): 1135-42.
  17. ^ M. Willis, ‘Inscriptions from Udayagiri: Locating Domains of Devotion, Patronage and Power in the Eleventh Century’, South Asian Studies 17 (2001): 41-53.
  18. ^ Meera Dass; Michael Willis (2002). "The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India". South Asian Studies. 18: 31-32 with footnote 31 on page 43.
  19. ^ HH Lake (1910), Besnagar, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 23, pages 135-145
  20. ^ a b c d Julia Shaw (2013). Buddhist Landscapes in Central India: Sanchi Hill and Archaeologies of Religious and Social Change, C. Third Century BC to Fifth Century AD. Routledge. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-1-61132-344-3.
  21. ^ Meera Dass; Michael Willis (2002). "The lion capital and the antiquity of sun worship in central India". South Asian Studies. 18: 31-32 with footnote 32 on page 43.
  22. ^ D. R. Patil, The Monuments of the Udayagiri Hill (Gwalior, 1948).
  23. ^ J. C. Harle, Gupta Sculpture: Indian Sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries A.D. (Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press, 1974).
  24. ^ Debala Mitra, ’Varāha Cave at Udayagiri – An Iconographic Study’, Journal of the Asiatic Society 5 (1963): 99-103; J. C. Harle, Gupta Sculpture (Oxford, 1974): figures 8-17.
  25. ^ Willis 2009. p. 79.
  26. ^ Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes (1854): 150; Thomas, Essays (1858) 1: 246; Cunningham, ASIR 10 (1874-77): 50; Fleet, CII 3 (1888): number 6; Bhandarkar, EI 19-23 (1927-36): appendix, number 1541; Bhandarkar, Chhabra and Gai, CII 3 (1981): number 7; Goyal (1993): number 10. The most recent reading and translation is in Willis, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 57 ISBN 978-0-521-51874-1.
  27. ^ Cunningham, ASIR 10 (1874-77): 50, plate xix, number 3; GAR (VS 1988/AD 1931-32): number 5; Dvivedī (VS 2004): number 714.
  28. ^ Phyllis Granoff, ‘Mahiṣāsuramardinī: An Analysis of the Myths’, East and West 29 (1979): 139-51.
  29. ^ Willis, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual, p. 142.
  30. ^ Parts of the record are re-read and new translations given in Willis, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual, p. 40.
  31. ^ Richard Salomon, ‘New Sankalipi (Shell Character) Inscriptions’, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 11-12 (1986): 109-52. Claims regarding decipherment must be discounted, see Salomon, ‘A Recent Claim to Decipherment of the Shell Script’, JAOS 107 (1987): 313-15; Salomon, Indian Epigraphy (Oxford, 1998): 70
  32. ^ Willis 2009. p. 35.
  33. ^ Willis 2009. p. 3.

Bibliography

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