Coordinates: 23°32′11.0″N 77°46′20″E Udayagiri Caves The Udayagiri Caves are twenty rock-cut caves near Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh Udayagiri Caves from the early years of the 5th century CE.[2][3] They contain some of the oldest surviving Hindu temples and iconography in India.[2][4][5] They are the only site that can be verifiably associated with a Gupta period monarch from its inscriptions.[6] 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).[7][6] They are notable for the ancient Udayagiri, Cave 5, Viṣṇu as the monumental relief sculpture of Vishnu in his incarnation as the man-boar Varaha, Varāha Avatar, general view rescuing the earth symbolically represented by Bhudevi clinging to the boar's tusk as described in Hindu mythology.[4] 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).[8] 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 remain a subject of continuing archaeological studies. The Udayagiri Caves complex consists of twenty caves, of which one is dedicated to Jainism and all others to Hinduism.[5] The Jain cave is notable for one of the oldest known Jaina inscriptions from 425 CE, while the Hindu Caves feature inscriptions from 401 CE.[9] 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.[7] Shown within India Contents Etymology Location History Delhi Iron Pillar Shown within India Archaeological scholarship Basic information Description Cave 1 Location Udayagiri, Vidisha Cave 2 Geographic 23°32′11.0″N Cave 3 : Shaivism coordinates 77°46′20″E Cave 4 : Shaivism and Shaktism Cave 5 : Vaishnavism Affiliation Hinduism, Jainism Cave 6 : Shaktism, Shaivism, Vaishnavism Deity Vishnu, Shakti, Shiva, Cave 7 : Shaktism Parshvanatha, others The Passage Cave 8 District Vidisha district Caves 9-11 State Madhya Pradesh Cave 12: Vaishnavism Cave 13 : Vaishnavism Country India Cave 14 Completed c. 250-410 CE Caves 15-18 Cave 19: Shaivism Cave 20 : Jainism Significance See also Notes References Bibliography External links Etymology Udayagiri, literally means the 'sunrise mountain'.[11] Udayagiri and Vidisha were a Buddhist and Bhagavata site by the 2nd century BCE as evidenced by the Heliodorus pillar. While the Heliodorus Samudra (ocean) personified next to the [note 1] pillar has been preserved, others Varaha sculpture, Cave 5. 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.[3] The town is referred to as Udaygiri or Udaigiri in some texts.[7] The site is also referred to as Visnupadagiri, as in inscriptions at the site. The term means the hill at The Udayagiri Lion Capital, found "the feet of Vishnu'.[12][13][note 3] near Udayagiri Caves, was first reported by Alexander Cunningham and is now in Gwalior. It is dated to Location closing decades of 2nd-century Udayagiri Caves are set in two low hills near Betwa River, on the banks of its BCE.[3][10][note 2] tributary Bes River.[3] 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.[15] 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.[16] 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.[3][17][note 4] History The site at Udayagiri Caves was the patronage of Chandragupta II, who is widely accepted by scholars to have ruled the Gupta Empire in central India between c. 380-414 CE. The Udayagiri Caves were created in final decades of the 4th-century, and consecrated in 401 CE.[18] This is based on three inscriptions:[9][19][20] Udayagiri hills and neighboring area. A post-consecration Sanskrit inscription in Cave 6 by a Vaishnava minister, the inscription mentions Chandragupta II and "year 82" (old Indian Gupta calendar, c. 401 CE). This is sometimes referred to as the "inscription in Chandragupta cave" or the "Chandragupta inscription of Udayagiri". A Shaiva devotee's Sanskrit inscription on the back wall of Cave 7, which does not mention a date but the information therein suggests it too is from 5th-century. A Sanskrit inscription in Cave 20 by aJainism devotee dated 425 CE. This is sometimes referred to as the "Kumaragupta inscription of Udayagiri". These inscriptions are not isolated. There are a number of additional stone inscriptions elsewhere at the Udayagiri site and nearby which mention court officials and Chandragupta II. Further the site also contains inscriptions from later centuries providing a firm fluorit for historical events, religious beliefs and the development of Indian script. For example, a Sanskrit inscription found on the left pillar at the entrance of Cave 19 states a date of Vikrama 1093 (c. 1037 CE), mentions the word Visnupada, states that this temple that was made by Chandragupta,[note 5] and its script is Nagari both for alphabet and numerals.[21] Many of the early inscriptions in this region is in Sankha Lipi, yet to be deciphered in a way that a majority of scholars would accept it.[22] Archaeological excavations of the 20th century on mounds between Vidisha rampart and Udayagiri have yielded evidence that suggests that Udayagiri and Vidisha formed a contiguous human settlement zone in the ancient times. Udayagiri hills would have been the suburb of Vidisha located near the confluence of two rivers[22] The Udayagiri Caves are likely euphemistically mentioned in Kalidasa text Meghduta in section 1.25 as the "Silavesma on the Nicaih hill", or the pleasure spot of Vidisha elites on the caves filled hill.[22] Between the 5th-century and the 12th-century, the Udayagiri site remained important to Hindu pilgrims as sacred geography. This is evidenced by a number of inscriptions in scripts that have been deciphered. Some inscriptions between the 9th and the 12th centuries, for example, mention land grants to the temple, an ancient tradition that provided resources for the maintenance and operation of significant temples. These do not mention famous kings. Some of these inscriptions mention grant from people who may have been regional chiefs, while others read like common people who cannot be traced to any text or other inscriptions in Central India. One Sanskrit inscription, for example, is a pilgrim named Damodara's record from179 1 CE who made a donation to the temple.[21][note 6] Delhi Iron Pillar Some historians have suggested that the iron pillar in the courtyard of Quwwat-ul-Islam at the Qutb Minar site in Delhi originally stood at Udayagiri.[23][24] The Delhi pillar is accepted by most scholars as one brought to Delhi from another distant site in India, but scholars do not agree on which site or when this relocation happened. If the Udayagiri source proposal is true, this implies that the site was targeted, artifacts damaged and removed during an invasion of the region by Delhi Sultanate armies in or about the early 13th-century, possibly those of Sultan named Iltutmish. This theory is based on multiple pieces of evidence such as the closeness of its design and style with pillars found in Udayagiri-Vidisha region, the images found on Gupta era coins (numismatics), the lack of evidence for alternate sites so far proposed, the claims in Persian made by Muslim court historians of Delhi Sultanate about the loot brought to Delhi after invasions particularly related to the pillar and Quwwat-ul-Islam, and particularly the Sanskrit inscription in Brahmi script on the Delhi Iron Pillar which mentions a Chandra's (Chandragupta II) devotion to Vishnu, and it being installed in Visnupadagiri. These proposals state that this Visnupadagiri is best interpreted as Udayagiri around 400 CE.[25][26] Archaeological scholarship The Udayagiri Caves were first studied in depth and reported by Alexander Cunningham in the 1870s.[3] 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.[3][7] 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 predated Hindu and Jaina arts, and that Hindus may have built their monuments by reusing Buddhist ones or on top of Buddhist ones.