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khandagiri udayagiri archaeology in india
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Introduction
This work is an attempt to trace the life of the Khandagiri- Udayagiri caves located on the
outskirts of the city of Bhubaneshwar, capital of Orissa. As of now Khandagiri-Udayagiri
has a dual life, of which, one is its status as a religious centre, of some importance for the
Jain community and of minor significance to the Hindu community, minor at least in
contrast to the great Orissan temples such as that of Lingaraj and Jagganath, Puri. Its
other life is as an archaeological site of considerable importance. Though not comparable
in terms of scale, artistic vision of architecture and sculptures to the great rock cut cave
complexes such as Ellora and Ajanta, Khandagiri is important because of its sheer age
value, as its history is traced back to within a century of Barabar caves, the earliest
examples of rock-cut architecture in India. Given its age, and contrasted with the other
contemporaneous sites, we see that it is one of the earliest cave complexes. Also the
presence of an extensive biographical inscription of the patron king makes the site even
more important for historians and archaeologists. The combination of these two factors in
the post independence years, especially in the year since the 1980’s, has given the site a
newer life, where it becomes a tourist attraction. Here the tropes of sightseeing, tour,
leisure are combined with pilgrimage and informative museological- exhibitionary
displays. While its patron king Aira-Kharavela-Mahameghvahana has become a central
celebrated figure in the writing of regional histories, it is Ashoka’s activity in Orissa that
is of much more interest to the narrative of national history.
1
My concern, to put it simply, is to talk about the history of the twin mountain site in the
past and its transformation in the present, and to analyse the way it has taken on the
different lives and meanings that it now has. What are the kinds of identities and
functions that the site takes on today, living its life in the three distinct but intersecting
realms of the historic, the religious and the touristic? My focus shall be to take already
existing data and historic writings along with ethnographic fieldwork and documentation
and combine it in ways that disrupt the standard historical understanding of the site. My
history of the site will be as much about removals, destructions and desecrations as it will
be about preservation, construction and consecration; it is as much about what is revealed
by history as it is about that which remains un-knowable. In the first chapter I shall look
at existing archaeological and historical writings on the site and see how the site was
framed differently in different ideological moments. The suggestion, drawing on Bruce
Trigger’s work, here is not simply that archaeology is partisan and influenced by external
forces ( state, patron, economic benefit) but that it is as much determined by the internal
state of the discipline as it is by external forces1.The first chapter looks at existing
scholarship on the site and how different phases of this scholarship came to be
discursively appropriated into different ideological projects, followed by an alternative
historical narrative of the site. In the second chapter I look at questions of inhabitation,
proprietorship and usage in light of its functioning as a tourist site. In the Epilogue I shall
move away from the institutional archaeological histories of the site and attempt to with
alternate kinds of practise that carry over from the pre-modern history of the site and is
also not limited specifically to Khandagiri-Udayagiri. With that view my attempt is to
1 Bruce Trigger, Romanticism Nationalism and Archaeology; Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology; ( Great Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1995)
2
look at the late 19th and 20th century career of the aniconic movement that emerges from
Khandagiri-Udayagiri. Focussing only on the figure of Poet-Saint Arakhit Das, I examine
three Ashrams of his sect.
In order to present a clear picture of the location, I am attaching several photographs and
a map of the site. Before moving to the first chapter I wish to enlist the various
institutions and structures on and around Khandagiri- Udayagiri.
Udayagiri: the Udayagiri hill is fenced by the A.S.I. and has a ticketed entry. The hill also
houses the famous Kharavela inscription in Hathi Gumpha
1) Paaduka Math: this is a Math/ Ashram housing sadhus of the Avadhoot mat. In
particular they are in the Order of Sain Arakhita Dasa, who stayed and composed
at the site, possibly during the early 19th century. Here his wooden sandals are
kept and worshipped as relics. The Ashram is adjoining the site and has two
entrances, one of which leads into Udayagiri’s A.S.I. controlled compound, the
other leads out onto the main road.
2) Jain Dharamashala : The Dharamshala is adjunct to the Paaduka Math and
Udayagiri but has no separate entry into the Udayagiri compound.
Khandagiri: Khandagiri is fenced but has an open entrance, it is not ticketed.
1) Jain temple : located at the top of the hill, it is an early 19th century structure
dedicated to Rishabhanatha, houses both medieval sculptural images as well as
newer images installed in the 20th century.
3
2) Barabhuji mandir : The barabhuji gumpha has been converted into a Hindu Devi
temple and it’s adjoining cave, Mahavir gumpha has also been appropratied to
serve as a storehouse and kitchen for the temple.
3) Lalatendukesari Ashram: located behind the Barabhuji temple, in front of the
Lalatendukesari Gumpha, it is a temporary structure with thatched roof.
4) Shoonya Mandir : called so because it is empty, it is a small single celled structure
above Mahavir Gumpha, which had an installed image but the image was
removed and the grabha-griha was plastered over and a stone bench installed
inside instead.
Apart from this there are several other structures needing mention. There is an inspection
bunglow at the base of Khandagiri, also a small cement structure, an Ashram that seems
to be defunct now. A public toilet built for the convenience of the tourists. Next to the
toilet is a small A.S.I. office which looks after the management of the site. There is a
charitable homeopathic dispensary and taps for drinking water, constructed and managed
by the Jain Dharamshala. There are several shops in temporary and permanent structures
which sell food items, cigarettes, cold beverages etc to the tourists. One section of the
forest on Khandagiri hill has recently been turned into a “spiritual” park, while a on plot
behind Udayagiri a new tourist centre is being constructed. Beyond that is the B.K.
College of Art and Craft which came up in 1984. Towards the national highway is a
Mahima Ashram which has been there for over a century and a half. Apart from the
upcoming residential and commercial buildings this area also has a significant amount of
Ashrams which came up during the late 70’s and the early 80’s.
4
Chapter 1: The Theoretical En-framing of Khandagiri – Udayagiri
This chapter, as the title suggests, looks at the way the site of Khandagiri and Udayagiri
has been discursively constructed through the twin disciplines of Indian Archaeology and
Indian Architecture during the period of the last century and a half. Through this
methodological discussion I intend to bring out, in the first section, certain ideological
attitudes that informed archaeological and architectural scholarship (in Orissa in general
and around the site in particular). Since it is not possible to cover in detail the scholarship
about a site over such a long period, I shall focus on certain important writers and
methodological debates which have made noteworthy contributions. By and large, there
can be three ideological moments marked out in the history of scholarship over
Khandagiri-Udayagiri, which I will group under the heads of the Colonial, the Nationalist
and the Regional. However, while these moments seem segregated by these three rather
neat categories, we shall later see that all these share some common logical assumptions.
Regarding the relationship between ideology and archaeological knowledge, Bruce
Trigger says : “ What archaeologists say about the past is not simply a reflection of their
ethnic of class prejudices or what a patron or authority figure wishes even if the latter is
6
in a position to be politically or economically coercive. It is also a product of the state of
the discipline in specific places and at particular times”2. The implication of Trigger’s
statement is that, while forces outside play a part in determining the kind of knowledge
produced, factors inside the discipline also play an important part in enabling or limiting
what can or cannot be said. However it should be remembered, as Trigger himself
acknowledges later in the essay, that the ‘state of the discipline’ that is, its ‘inside’ is also
determined to a large degree by ‘outside’ factors. In the second section, I attempt to
narrate an alternate linear history of the site. While most writers are concerned with
establishing a continuous Jain tradition at the site, I attempt to look at the possibility of a
historical presence of other sects at the site. My main intention in this chapter is to locate
the range of architectural, stylistic epigraphic, nuministic and textual debates that
occurred around the site of Khandagiri-Udayagiri within a history of scholarship on the
site, and link these debates to a changing chronology of what I label as the Colonial,
National and Regional approaches.
Stylistic- Architectural Interpretations
The earliest writings on Orissa include writings like ‘Orissa: the garden of superstition
and idolatry’ by William F.B. Laurie which worked with a clear Christian bias against
native idol worshipping3. This was followed by a later antiquarian genre such as
Stirling’s Orissa : It’s Geography, Statistics, History, Religion and Antiquities4; it was
only after works like this, that the initial works on Indian Architecture by James
2 Bruce Trigger, Romanticism Nationalism and Archaeology; Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology; ( Great Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1995) Pg. 266.3 William F.B. Lauire, Orissa, the garden of superstition and idolatry, (Bhattacharya, 2nd edition, 2000)4Andrew Sterling, Orissa : It’s Geography, Statistics, History, Religion and Antiquities, (John Snow, London, 1846).
7
Fergusson came about5. By and large Fergusson’s writings combined the European
Christian aversion and the archaeological curiosity of the previous genres. Racial themes
which have a religious veil over them in writings such as those of Laurie, appear rather
starkly at places in Fergusson’s writings. Trigger terms the earliest phase of archaeology
as evolutionary archaeology, whereby the histories of the European civilisations were
pushed back as far as possible into the period of antiquity and it was deployed in the
colonies, within regions like America, Australia, Africa etc, to establish them as barbaric
societies, outside historical time. The essential purpose of evolutionary archaeology was
to establish the racial superiority of the Europeans6. On one hand, working with liner
notions of progress, it tried to trace all civilizational influences to Europe (Greece etc),
on the other had it documented and classified the so called native cultures to show that
they existed in a natural state, that society for them had not evolved at all. Since they
existed at the same state of nature as beasts thus they were beneath the civilised white
man. However, in a place like India, it was not possible to argue the absence of
civilizational values as material evidence, architectural, artistic and textual would all
point to the contrary. Taking a different form, Colonial Archaeology had to recognise the
literature, arts and architecture as belonging to an advanced civilisation but one that was
long in ruins. Fergusson takes such a position, when, on the one hand, he argued that
stone architecture in India was not indigenously developed but rather was imported from
ancient Greece and Rome, by artisans who possibly came to India along with Alexander;
5 James Fergusson, Illustration of the Rock-Cut Temples of India. London: Weale, 1845; History of Indian
and Eastern Architecture. London: Murray, 1876; Reprint, 2 vols. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1972.
6 Ibid
8
and on the other hand, he challenged the scholarship of native scholars on racial grounds
and claimed that the Hindus as a race were incapable of sound judgement 7. Both these
trajectories of Fergusson’s writings intersect visibly in the case of the Khandagiri and
Udayagiri caves or the ‘Katak Caves’ as he calls them. In The Cave Temples of India he
carries out a thick description and a stylistic analysis of the site supplemented by sketches
of the sites. Seeing and visuality played a key role in his methodology, he sets up an
evolutionary schema, wherein he contrasts several sites and moves from simplicity to
complexity. Regarding Khandagiri-Udayagiri he sets out an elaborate dating of the caves
based on their architectural and sculptural complexity - where he located Hathi Gumpha
as the earliest, because it is “a natural cavern very little improved upon by art”8; followed
by single celled chambers such as Sarpa and Bagh Gumphas, and complex caves such as
Ananta and Rani Gumphas which he dated to the “mature period”. He dates the caves by
comparing them with other similar sites, arguing that Khandagiri-Udayagiri was probably
a Buddhist site going by multiple appearance of the sacred tree and Gajalaxmi which are
prominently carved in Buddhist sites such as Sanchi and Bharut as well as Bodh Gaya 9.
He also puts forward his theory of European origins of the Indian tradition of rock-cut
architecture. Observing that facades of rock-cut structures often showed elements that
were functional in wooden architecture, he deduces that stone architecture faithfully
imitates the appearance of wooden architecture in India, and that elements which would
have been functional in wooden architecture become unnecessary decorations in rock-cut
architecture. This, coupled his sense of an absence of early developmental stages in the
history of Indian architecture, leads him to conclude that the Indians did not develop an 7 James Ferguson & James Beglar, The Cave Temples of India, (W. H. Allen & Co. 1880)8 Ibid.9 Ibid.
9
autonomous tradition of rock-cut architecture and propose, instead, that this architectural
form was brought to India from Europe, possibly along with Alexander’s army, prior to
which the Indians were capable of working only with the perishable medium of wood. It
is because of this he says that “as a rule the history of art in India as I have frequently
pointed out is written in decay. ......the highest point of perfection was apparently reached
in the fourth or fifth century, the decay however set in shortly afterward”10.
Fergusson dated Khandagiri, especially caves like Ananta and Hathi Gumpha, to 2nd
century B.C.; the caves were in all likelihood post-Ashoka. In Fergusson’s writing, the
reign of Ashoka appears as a definitive period for Indian art and architecture. He
observes that caves before Ashoka were “hardly ever improved upon by art”, that stone
architecture was unknown in India before the arrival of Alexander, and that it was
Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta and the patron of Buddhism who first puts it to
effective use11.
Rajendra Lal Mitra was one of the first Indian scholars to hold an office in the Asiatic
Society of Bengal and soon gained a place of eminence as a Sanskritist within the newly
emerging institutional production of knowledge such as the Archaeologial Survey and
The Asiatic Society. In 1868 the government of Bengal entrusted to him a project for
documenting the architectural and sculptural traditions of India, he decided to focus on
the temples of Bhubaneshwar. He was assisted by H.H. Locke, the principal govt. School
of Arts, Calcutta and his students, who made possible the extensive surveys,
photography, sketches and plaster casts required for this work. The two volume tome
Antiquities of Orissa was the result of this endeavour. Ferguson’s claims were keenly
10 Ibid, Pg 91.11 Ibid.
10
contested by Rajendra Lal Mitra, in his book, The Antiquities of Orissa. While Fergusson
preferred a stylistic approach, Mitra advocated the ‘sober minded’ use of epigraphic
evidence. He challenged Fergusson’s claims that the history of Indian art was one of
decline and suggested that increasing ornamentation was a sign of progress and not
decadence. He also rejected Fergusson’s theory of foreign origins of Indian architecture
and sculpture on the grounds of the absence of adequate proof. While he acknowledges
certain Greek influences, he was firmly of the opinion that it was unlikely that stone
carving was imported wholesale from Greece. He argued that the ideal form of beauty
was the same for all people and its approximations can produce similar results without
the cultures having to have borrowed from each other; he further argued that stylistic
criteria do not give any real information regarding nationality and that the virtues of
outline, drapery and finished chiselling in sculpture,for instance, were not exclusive to
Greece. The theory he said was grounded in the European belief that Indians were not
capable of producing so refined an art, as contemporary art-practices were nowhere near
that kind of refinement. This was, according to Mitra, because centuries of Islamic
oppression had crippled artistic production and idol making of the classical Indian
tradition12.
Mitra, rejected the claims that the Khandagiri-Udaygiri site was Jain, partly because, in
his time Jainism had been dated to only a century before the Christian era. He argues that
the caves were Buddhist and that it was not necessary that Buddhist caves had to have
iconic Buddhist imagery, arguing that the site belonged to an early aniconic phase of
Buddhism. 13
12 Rajendra Lal Mitra, The Antiquities of Orissa Vol-2, Calcutta, Newman, 1880. 13 Ibid.
11
In stylistically dating the caves, while Fergusson follows an evolutionary schema, going
from the simplest to the most complex, Rajendralal Mitra argues that it is much more
probable that the largest more elaborate shrines like Rani, Ananta or Ganesh Gumphas
were all built initially and in the same cycle, that the stylistic difference between them
cannot be said to be spread across centuries, and that the smaller, simpler shrines were
the ones which were probably added later. Mitra dates all the caves of Udaygiri and
Khandagiri to well before Ashoka, to 4th century B.C.14
In his most polemical text, Archaeology in India with special reference to the works of
Babu Rajendra Lal Mitra, Fergusson attempts to retort to Mitra’s attacks. Shifting his
position here, he significantly claims that it was not his intention to suggest, as “the
Babu” makes him out to, that the shift from wood to stone happened in India because of
the civilising influence of the Bactrian Greeks and he attributes the process instead to
“the menace of white ants”. He also questions the reliability of epigraphic evidence as
there is no way of knowing if an inscription is integral or as been added later, an shows
how in many cases the inscription may mislead. However, in this book he accepts the
twin mountain caves as a Jain site following, Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji’s translation of
the Hathi Gumpha inscription. Most of the book was dedicated to attacking Babu
Rajendra Lal Mitra, him being the first native scholar of substance to write on Indian
Archaeology; its central assumption lay in uestioning the ability of the natives to make
sound judgements. The book was written during the Ilbert bill controversy, where
Europeans refused to be tried by native judges in criminal proceedings. Rajendra Lal
14 Ibid.
12
Mitra served in Fergusson’s writing as an example of the lack of ability for impartial
judgement of western educated Indians/ Bengalis15.
E.B. Havell was an influential English Arts administrator and Art Historian, he was the
principal of the Goverment School of Art, Calcutta from 1896 to 1905, there Havell
worked along with Abanindranath Tagore to redefine Indian Art education. He
established the Bengal School of Art which sought to adapt British art education in India
so as to reject the previous emphasis placed on European traditions in favour of Native
Indian styles of Art, such as the Mughal miniature tradition. In his book The Ancient and
Medieval Architecture of India, he tries to move away from the narrative of decadence
woven around Indian art as well as rubbished the claims for it being a simple derivative
of Greek and Roman influences. Rather, he tried to argue that both the Greek and the
Indian civilisations emerged from the same Aryan source, and stressed that since it was in
India that Aryan architecture was still a living practice, that Europeans could also from
this source retrieve and rejuvenate their own classical tradition . E.B. Havell criticized
Fergusson for assuming that the history of Indian sculpture was written in decay and also
for attempting to label and categorize sites into separate water-tight compartments such
as ‘Jain’ or ‘Buddhist’. In his own formal analysis, he gives us the useful insight that the
development of hero worship in Buddhism and Jainism was such that the caves of
ascetics were held in the same regard as temples, that the house of the ascetic was
equivalent to the house of god 16.
15 Fergusson, James. Archaeology in India, with Especial Reference to the Works of Babu RajendralalaMitra. London: Trubner, 1884. Reprint, New Delhi: K.B. Publications, 1970.16 E.B. Havell, The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation, (London, John Murray, 1915).
13
Because of their sheer age value, the sites of Khandagiri and Udayagiri thus
become embroiled in one of the most important archaeological debates of the late
19th century – the debate on the question of the ‘origins’ of Indian architecture and
sculpture, with the claims of antiquity and origins irredeemably linked to the
canonical figure of the Mauryan Empeor, Ashoka. For the Europeans, the age of
Ashoka becomes the definitive moment in early Indian art and architectural
history for two primary reasons - one because he is the grandson of Chandragupta
Maurya, whose associations with the Greeks had been established by Princep; the
other, because of Ashoka’s patronage of Buddhism. While it had some
resemblances to monastic Christianity, Buddhism in India became the critical
factor to reckon with because it took away the civilisational impetus away from
the Brahmanical forces. For the early nationalists what was important was to
recover India’s authorship over its own antiquities, to demonstrate that there was
something essentially ‘Indian’ about these art works, and that there were not
merely derivative of the Greek and Roman traditions. This one may speculate,
was probably one of the reasons behind Mitra’s insistence for a pre-Ashokan date
for the site.
Epigraphic and Nuministic Evidences
Considering that ‘native’ scholars enjoyed a considerable advantage compared to the
European scholars in the field of deciphering inscriptions, given their familiarity with the
language, something which even Fergusson admits in his Archaeology in India, it is not
surprising that nationalistic archaeology begins mostly by focussing on epigraphic
14
evidence. The first half of the 20th century is when most of this kind of writing was
produced by Indian scholars. Rajendra Lal Mitra, while insisting on his preference for
epigraphic evidence, actually makes a lot of analysis on stylistic basis as compared to
later scholars.
According to Trigger, “Under the impetus of Nationalism, Archaeology abandoned a
primary focus on evolution and concentrated on interpreting the archaeological record as
history of specific peoples”. Here “archaeologists sought to lengthen the pedigrees of
their own national or ethnic groups and to glorify these groups...............identifying a
people with a succession of specific archaeological cultures leading into the remote past
and drawing attention to special achievements of these cultures”17.
Notable writers of this period would be Manomohan Ganguly, Rakhal Das Banerji and
K.P. Jayaswal and B.M. Barua. While Ganguly, and Banerji were Bengali scholars who
were writing histories of Orissa, projecting an Oriya culture into ancient times and tracing
its development into the present, Barua’s scholarship was nationalistic in the larger sense,
that it sought to append Oriya history to the larger history of the nation. In these debates
on epigraphy as a source for ancient Indian history, the sites of Khandagiri-Udayagiri and
the Hathi Gumpha inscription now begin to play an important part. Being the oldest
surviving material- epigraphic record, it becomes a crucial piece of evidence for writing
the history of the Orissa province. Hence we have a series of writers obsessively
attempting to interpret it and use it to re-construct the ancient history of Orissa. Using
epigraphic analysis, scholars have assigned Kharavela’s date from anywhere between 4th
century B.C. to 1st century A.D.
17 Bruce Trigger, Romanticism Nationalism and Archaeology; Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology; ( Great Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1995) Pg. 269.
15
The following is a chart of the epigraphic dating of Hathi Gumpha on Udayagiri by
different Indian scholars18 :
4th B.C.- Rajendra Lal Mitra
3rd B.C.- Fleet and Luders, Manomohan Ganguly
2nd B.C.- Bhagwan Lal Indraji, Stenkonow, K.P. Jayaswal, R.D. Banerji, K.C. Panigrahi
1st B.C.- R.P Chanda, H.C. Ray Choudhary, N.N. Ghosh, D.C. Sircar
1st A.D.- Benimadhab Barua
All the epigraphists who have worked on the inscription acknowledge the fact that the
inscription is highly eroded, with much of it impossible to decipher - only the first six or
seven lines are in good condition, and the last four lines also considered still readable by
some specialists. If we move from the earlier to the later readings of the Hathi Gumpha
inscription, we can clearly discern a shift in themes and the amount of historical
information contained. The earliest translations of the inscription were by James Princep
in the early 19th century19, followed by Rajendra Lal Mitra in the 1870s. In their
translations they mention in the third line, a battle in the Kalinga city after which
Kharavela or Aira is anointed king20. The rest of the translation consists of garbled
phrases, talking about the king’s sense of justice and charity or his acts of construction.
There is a mention of Nanda Raja in the passing, with Princep, only in line 6 , with Mitra
18 Taken from the discussion on Epigraphic debates over Khandagiri-Udayagiri, R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (D.K. Publications, 1981).19 Princep as quoted by Rajendra Lal Mitra, , Antiquities of Orissa Vol-2, Calcutta, Newman, 1880.
20 Rajendra Lal Mitra, Antiquities of Orissa Vol-2, Calcutta, Newman, 1880.
16
also mentioning him in line 12 which Princep does not translate21. Lines 7 to 13 remain
hazy and mostly illegible at this point. There is no mention of Nanda Raja’s canal or the
Kalinga Jina. The prime historical issues that emerge from these translations of the
inscription have to do with Kharavela’s lineage; as there is no mention of his
predecessors, the question of him being a usurper of the throne of Kalinga is one these
writers seriously raise. While Princep believes that Kharavela ousted an usurper, Mitra is
of the opinion that there is nothing in the epigraph to suggest this. For him rather, the
absence of information regarding his lineage coupled with the kind of policy Kharavela
pursued is proof enough of his being a usurper. According to him Kharavela had to wage
war to become king and pursued expansionist policies to gain acceptance and
acknowledgement for his power. He had to appease his subjects though celebrations,
festivities and civic repairs and amenities, as well as strengthen his own positions by
repairing fortification and patronising various religions that would further his cause. For
Mitra, all these activities make sense as the actions of an usurper who had to cement his
positions because he lacked the reverence due to a king from a long hallowed lineage22.
After Princep and Mitra, it was Bhagwan Lal Indraji who translated the Hathi Gumpha
inscription23. It was a landmark transliteration which was to leave an impact on all future
epigraphic and historical writings about the site, with Indraji making the claim, for the
first time, that the name of the king in the epigraph was not Aira but Kharavela and that
Kharavela was a Jain king. After this, the most significant and detailed reference to the
site and its famous inscription comes from Mano Mohan Ganguly in the early 20th
21 Ibid.22 Ibid.23 Rakhal Das Banerji, History of Orissa: from the earliest times to the British period, Volume 1, (R.Chatterjee, Calcutta, 1931)
17
century, in his book, Orissa and her Remains, which traces the history of Orissa right
from the pre-historic period to the early modern period. He pays special attention to
Khandagiri and Udayagiri, looking on the earliest architectural remains of the site as
indicative of the high cultural achievements of ancient Orissa. Writing after Indraji’s
dating of the site as post –Ashokan, to 157 B.C, Mano Mohan Ganguly, perhaps taking a
cue from Mitra, continues to dates the site o the 3rd century B.C.. He bases his dating on
inscriptional reference to other caves but does not take the trouble of explaining himself
any further24. He also credits the size of the caves and their architectural modifications
not to an evolutionary sequence of stylistic development but to variations in patronage
and the economic capacities of those funding these rock-cut cave constructions. In his
estimation, the cave architecture of the site was at least four centuries in the making from
the 3rd century B.C. to about 100 A.D.25
It was during the third decade of the 20th century that the most important epigraphic
debate over this site was carried out, with Rakhladas Banerji and K.P. Jayaswal standing
at one end and B.M. Barua at the other. Banerji and Jayaswal shared Ganguly’s political
concern for creating a grand narrative of Orissan history, but they followed it more in line
with Bhagwanlal Indraji’s epigraphic lineage. For them Kharavela was an iconic king,
most definitely post-Ashokan and Jain. His figure was brought out through epigraphic
analysis as a cultural hero, displaying the qualities of a warrior king as well as a
renouncing sage. Most of their work was also concerned with imbuing the figure of
Kharavela with some historical weight. Thus the task was to locate his temporally not
24 Mano Mohan Ganguly, Orissa and her Remains ( Thacker, Spink and Co., 1912).25 Ibid.
18
through stylistic dating of the caves but by locating references to historic places or
personages mentioned in the epigraph26.
In the translations of the Hathi Gumpha inscription by Indraji, Jayaswal and R.D. Banerji,
it is possible to track a distinct transformations in the tone and content of what the
inscription is shown to reveal. There is no mention of a battle in Kalinga city in the third
line, but, in these readings, Kharavela, instead of being a benevolent figure, brave, kind,
religious, dispensing justice when needed, takes on the image of a martial, warring and
plundering ruler, waging wars all over the sub-continent, moving towards religion only
towards the end of his career. Suddenly; the damaged, un-translatable lines from the 6th
to the 13th begin to contain mention of his military exploits and most importantly, newer
names of historical personages and locations27. And all the three newly introduced
characters in Kharavela’s story, Satakarni, Bahastimita and Demitrios turn out to be
dated historical characters, contemporaries of Kharavela existing roughly around the 2nd
century B.C., dated through recent epigraphic or numismatic discoveries, all of whom
were contemporaries 28Satkarni was identified as Sri Satkarni, founder of Satavahana
dynasty, from the Nasik chaitya inscription. Barua mentions him as the ruler of the city
of Asika29, Banerji and Jayaswal mention it (in line 4 of the inscription) as the city of
Musikas30 whereas Mitra mentions Tanasika and Princep, Sakanagara31. Yavana Raja is
conjectured to be the Greek kind Demitrios. Barua maintains that there is no reference in
26 Rakhal Das Banerji, History of Orissa: from the earliest times to the British period, Volume 1, (R.Chatterjee, Calcutta, 1931)27 Epigraphica Indica, Vol XX, 1929-30 (Archaeological Survey of India, 1930).28 Ibid.29 Benimadhab Barua, Old Brāhmī inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khaṇḍagiri caves (University of Calcutta, 1929)30 (Banerji, 1931).31 (Mitra, 1880).
19
the inscription to a Yavan Raja32. Banerji presumes that he was a young man at the end of
the 3rd century B.C. and thus met Kharavela somewhere in the first half of the 2nd century
B.C.33 Bahastimita is shown to be a ruler of the Sunga dynasty, reigning over Anga and
Magadha, his identity corroborated from coins found in Kosambi and Ahichhatra as well
as epigraphic references. 34As for the figure of the Nanda Raja, the one constantly
mentioned in all translations, there was much confusion. For Barua, there was a debate
over whether the inscription said he preceded Kharavel by 103 or 300 years35, while
Jayaswal is confused between 113 and 1300 years36. Most popularly he was accepted to
be Mahapadmananda. However, B.C. Mazumdar pointed out that Chandragupta was also
referred to in textual tradition as Nandendu37, which later led Barua and K.C. Panigrahi to
identify Nanda Raja with Ashoka38.
While Princep and Mitra claim that line 14 of the inscription mentions Kharavela’s
marriage to the daughter of a hill-king39, Jayaswal and Banerji claim that in that year he
takes up religion and realises the relation of the body and the soul40. Banerji we must
remember was patronised by various royal families of Orissa at a time when the struggle
for a linguistic identity for Oriya as a language separate from Bengal was going on, and
had hence a considerable role to play in glorifying the traditions of his patrons41. Banerji
32 (Barua, 1929).33 (Banerji, 1931).34 Ibid.35 (Barua, 1929).
36 (Jayaswal, 1930).37 B.C. Mazumdar, Orissa in the Making (University of Calcutta, 1925).38 (Barua, 1929).39 (Mitra, 1880).40 (Jayaswal, Banerji; 1929-30).41 For a more detailed discussion on this theme please look at Chapter two : Recoviering Orissa: Architecture, Archaeology and the production of Regional Histories, of Sraman Mukherjee’s thesis: Unearthing the Pasts of Bengal Bihar and Orissa: Archaeology, Museums and History Writing in the Making of Ancient Eastern India, 1862-1936, ( Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Calcutta 2010)
20
refers to him as a king of religion and a king of monks. In fact, it can be noted that
Kharavela’s biography, as it is presented by Banerji, is strongly derived from Jain ideas
of ideal kingship as are embodied in the story of Bahubali, who was a great king but had
to go to war in order to stop the greedy expansionist advances of his brother Bharat. After
Bahubali defeats Bharat, he renounces kingship and, by penance, attains enlightenment42.
For Banerji, Kharvela initially is a brave warrior king who sets right the wrong suffered
by Kalinga because of the defeat of the kingdom in the hands of Ashoka and the
Magadhian army. Thus, in Banerji’s translation, Kharvela defeats Magadha and makes
the ruler Bahastimita bow at his feet - finally, by bringing back the Kalinga Jina, he
restores Kalinga’s lost pride and glory and re-establishes dharma. Later, towards the end
of his career, Banerji analyses that Kharavela understood the relationship between the
soul and the body, received deeper spiritual knowledge and renounced his kingship43.
Banerji also attempts to directly link Udayagiri hill with Mahavira, claiming that
Kharavela distributed white cloth to monks on Kumari hill where Mahavira had preached
religion, despite there being no evidence whatsoever that Mahavira actually ever visited
the site44. He also claims that it is in this sacred site that Kharvela facilitated a
compilation of the Angas, the sacred canon of the Jains.
Banerji also tries to restore to Kharavela a historical lineage, arguing that his title Aira
could be translated as Aida or Aila, meaning the sons of Ila, also speculating hat some
form of matriarchy was prevalent among his predecessors.45.
42 Paul Dundas, The Jains (London, Routledge, 1992).43 (Jayaswal, Banerji; 1929-30).44 (Banerji, 1931).45 Ibid.
21
Writing around the same time, Beni Madhab Barua takes a strong set of counter positions
in his book, Old Brahmi inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves. He sets
out to re-interpret the inscription and establishes ten corrections46 over previous
interpretations, with the following among them -
No reference to a Greek king Dimita/ Demitrios retreating.
No statement regarding Pithunda being ploughed by asses
No reference to league of Tamil powers.
No mention of Maurya era.
No mention of Nanda era
Barua pays special attention to the personal history of Kharavela, who he says was a
Jain but not in the same sense that Ashoka was a Buddhist. For Barua, Kharavela was not
a king who took his religion ‘seriously’. While Kharavela pursued a policy of tolerance
towards all, he did not, rather could not, set up a monastic-bureaucratic framework of
governance and public service like Ashoka did 47. Attempting to relegate Kharavela to a
position of a provincial figure in ancient Indian history, compared to the national and
world-wide stature of monarchs like Ashoka or Akbar,48 he also shown to be lacking in
the kind of independent and innovative ideas on religion that made for the greatness of
Ashoka or Akbar . For Barua, Kharavela was at best a provincial precursor of
Samudragupta in war and valour, and of other imperial Gupta rulers in his patronage of
the arts.
46 Benimadhab Barua, Old Brāhmī inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khaṇḍagiri caves (University of Calcutta, 1929)
47 (Barua, 1929).48 One way of looking at the Nationalist preference of rulers like Ashoka and Akbar is cartographic, that is the stretch of land they ruled was seen by the Nationalist historians to anticipate the body of the modern Nation.
22
By looking at refrences of Satakarni, Bahastimita and Nanda Raja, Barua maintains that
Kharavela could not have been pre-Ashokan. Barua, in order to translate the inscription,
uses as a standard Brahmi alphabets written in scarlet colour in Khandagiri’s Tatowa
Gumpha, which he claims is the alphabet written over and over in six lines. However, the
problem with his work is that the standard he chooses is itself problematic - the letters are
not uniform, some letters have character features of the alphabet of the Maurya
inscription, there are 33 letters instead of the required 41 consonants, and finally the last
line of this epigraph remains undeciphered even by Barua 49.
Epigraphic scholarship had to constantly contend with multiple layers of uncertainty. The
first uncertainty related to the physical highly eroded state of the Hathi Gumpha
inscription, where a misreading or faulty identification of even one or two letters could
radically alter an entire sentence and its meaning. For example the lower storey of the
Manchapuri cave contains the inscription “This is the cave of the clever, the king, Master
of Kalinga, whose vehicle is the great cloud, Kudepasiri” – where some scholars have
read Kudepasiri as Vakradeva. In the Bagh Gumpha, Princep reads the inscription as “ of
the fierce anti-Vedist”50 and Jayaswal as “The cave of the town judge Sabuti”51. The other
layer of uncertainty is the alphabet used, as scripts often tend to be fluid and do not
conform to notions of fixed periods or rules of historical palaeography. It has been
observed in case of the Hathi Gumpha inscription the script may contain letters from
more than one tradition. Another major problem with epigraphic analysis of ancient
inscriptions is the problem of transliteration. The epigraphist can only translate the
49 (Barua, 1929).50 (Mitra, 1880).51 (Jayaswal, Banerji; 1929-30).
23
inscription after considering it as prose, as an informative notice. However prose writing
in the ancient Indian tradtion is unknown - every writing and every utterance was
subjected to the laws of Kavya or poetics. One major obstacle in transliterating classical
or ancient texts is the problem of shlesh alankar, by which the same word or sentence can
mean different things in subsequent readings. For example we can look at R.D. Banerji’s
transliteration of Tatwa Gumpha No. II’s inscription, which he reads as “ The cave
of ............ Kusumna, the servant ( or inhabitant) or Padamulika”52. Whereas Banerji tends
to use Padamulika as a proper noun, there is a strong possibility that it is an adjective,
‘one who is just as the dust on the sole of the great one’ an equivalent in modern Bangla
would be ‘charanodasi’.
Thus there are two distinct strands in the writing of this period, where scholarship focuses
mainly around epigraphic evidence. One is the that of regional nationalism where the
impulse is to either locate Kharavela as prior to Ashoka, and where that cannot be done,
Kharavela is shown to have undone the military wrongs suffered by Kalinga at the hands
of Magadhan army, and thereby qualify for recognition as a more religious king than
Ashoka. That Kharavela was a Jain is stressed in this scholarship in order to counter
Ashoka’s Buddhism, and also to compensate for the ‘tantric’ phase of Buddhism that
blooms in the medieval period, which was seen by 19th – 20th century historians as an
embarrassing sign of civilizational decline. The other strand comprises the work of
nationalist scholars such as B.M, Barua who saw the history of Orissa and Kharavela as
an appended to the larger history of India, where figures like Ashoka and Akbar could
figure as the only major protagonists because their empires corresponded with the
52 (Jayaswal, Banerji; 1929-30).
24
geographical extent of the nation. In this body of writing, figures like Kharavela were
only provincial and subservient to internationally renowned heroes such as Ashoka.
Textual Sources, Debala Mitra, Archaeology and the ‘Jain’ Authentication of the Site
In this phase, further scholarship proceeds by unproblematically accepting Banerji’s
account of the site and buttressing it with references to Jain and Hindu religious or
Shilpashastra texts. In this regard, I am mainly looking at two recent writers N.K. Sahu
and R.P. Mahapatra, both of whom publish their books in 1984 53. Even though there are
subtle differences in their positions, both of them try and argue for a trans-historical Jain
claim over the site and even go so far as to argue that Jainism was popular in religion
even before the Nanda conquest of Orissa. But Sahu and Mahapatra’s writings were
made possible only by Debala Mitra’s excavation at the site and associated writings in the
1960’s.
The trend of using textual sources to buttress one’s arguments does not begin with Debala
Mitra or Sahu or Mahapatra; Barua, for example, in order to date Kharavela, had drawn
heavily and rather uncritically from Pauranic genealogies. From Bhavishya Purana he
gathers that seven Kosala kings of Meghavahana dynasty and seven kings of
Andhrabhrata ruled as contemporaries. Barua stretches his source for his purposes to
make the proposition that each king of a dynasty ruled at the same time as a
corresponding king of the other. Since Andhrabhrata Satakarni was the sixth, Barua
places Kharavela as the sixth king of his dynasty as well. To deal with the incongruities,
53 The significance of the period in which these works are published becomes more evident in light of the discussion in the second chapter regarding the controversy over Barabhuji Gumpha.
25
he comes up with a farfetched theory of dual kingship, where two Chedi kings, a father
and son would rule in conjunction. By this he also seeks to explain the fact that
Kharavela’s son Kadampa Kudepa shares the same titles as him54.
It was during the 1960’s that Debala Mitra conducts an excavation at the site, and
publishes what remains to date one of the most authoritative archaeological account of
Udayagiri-Khandagiri. In the excavation, a ramp leading to Hathi Gumpha was
uncovered and the foundation stones of an apsidal structure were uncoverd on Udayagiri,
on Khandagiri hill remnants of several structural edifices were discovered, some of which
may still be seen lying around in the unfrequented areas of the hill. While the remnants
on Khandagiri indicated medieval architectural activity on Khandagiri the excavations on
Udayagiri were for un-problematically dated to the ancient period55. The apsidal hall was
conjectured to be the ‘many pillared hall’ that the inscription mentions Kharavela as
having made at the site to house the recovered ‘Kalinga Jina’56.
Debala Mitra’s scholarship in many ways maked the beginning of the third period of
scholarship around the site. She is keen to recover a Jain ancient past of the site, and
create cross connections between the inscription and the material remains to this
particular effect; something on which Sahu and Mahapatra later picked up on.
Epigraphically, Indraji’s reading of Kharavela as Jain, based on the opening invocation
and (contestable) mention of the Kalinga Jina, is never challenged. Rajendra Lal Mitra’s
strong objections to such a nomenclature were never substantially refuted, rather later
54 (Barua, 1929).55 Debala Mitra, Udayagiri & Khandagiri, ( New Delhi, Director General Archaeological Survey of India, 1960).56 Even though the excavated structure does not match up to the descriptions of the structure mentioned in the inscription. Another reading of the structure can be made, it could equally well demonstrate a medieval Buddhist presence at the site.
26
scholars chose to ignore them altogether57. Debala Mitra sticks to imagining Kharavela as
a Jain and as an eclectic who honoured all religions58. Sticking to the essentials of
Banerji’s narration she recreates Kharavela as a just and righteous Jain king. As regards
the architechture, she contrasts them to the Buddhist caves of western India to underline
their difference in form and function, attributing their small size and bare functionality to
the extreme asceticism of Jains. Several objections can be raised to this – first, that the
Buddhist caves of Western India were constructed centuries after Udayagiri and
Khandagiri and hence mark a different phase altogether; second, that there are also some
Jain caves among Buddhist caves in western India and they appear to be made on similar
formats. Most importantly, she ignores the fact that Khandagiri-Udayagiri is a small hill
and does not have large monolithic rocks from which caves as monumental as those of
western India couldn be carved. That the rocks are small also explains the fact of the low
height and austere appearance of the caves and not because of the rigours of the Jain
ascetic life as Debala Mitra would have us believe. Assuming that the caves were made in
the 2nd century B.C., it is not possible that the larger caves such as Rani or Ananta
Gumphas functioned as monasteries because in that period monks were under strict
sectarian instructions to constantly travel and only seek shelter during the rainy seasons,
in which case, established Jain monasteries could not have functioned. In fact, monastic
architecture mostly only appears after the 5th century A.D. Regarding the religion of the
site, she acknowledges that, looking at the early phase of activity at the site, it is evident
that the early phase was an aniconic one, which would make the identification of the
57 Rajendra Lal Mitra was rather critical of the Jain presence at the site. He accused them of quarrying stone from the caves to build the temple, also held them and the Muslims responsible for any Buddhist figural imagery that might have existed there. Most importantly he brought Pt. Indraji’s nomenclature into doubt, he claimed that the opening invocation of “Namo Arihantanam, Namo Siddhanam” was not exclusively Jain. Buddha himself was referred to as the great Jina.58 (Mitra, 1960).
27
Kalinga Jina as an image of a Thirthakara difficult. She goes on thereafter to speculate
that the Kalinga Jina was a symbol and not a figure59. Here, another writer must be
mentioned in this regard, Nilakantha Dash was of the opinion that the Kalinga Jina was
actually Nilamadhava, the proto-Jagannatha, who is also the presiding deity of the main
functioning temple in present day Orissa. According to this account, the Jain image was
transformed into Nila (black/ dark)-Ma (mother)- Dhava (white/light/creation) by the
Sunyavadi Buddhists, which was later then transformed into Jagannatha60.
Debala Mitra utilises Rajendralal Mitra’s approach that the sculpted friezes in their
details could reveal much about the social life of that period. For him, the relief
depictions of clothing, hair and ornament had appeared like a photographic visual record
of historic societies. Debala Mitra picks up on this approach of reading sculpture as
documents of ancient social life and customs, an approach that is taken to its extreme by
N.K. Sahu, one of the few Oriya writer to write about the site. Sahu in his book,
Kharavela, presents a lengthy account of Kharavela’s biography, personal history and
ancestry. He literally converts each line from the inscription into a chapter of his book.
He presents accounts of dresses and jewellery in vogue at that time, deriving details from
the sculptural reliefs. He also talks about military strategies and weapons, Kharavela’s
military career, his religious views, and social and historical conditions at the time.
Giving an account of musical instrument and dance, he goes so far as to write an entire
chapter on Kharavela, celebrating him as the pioneering Dramaturgist King, as there is
mention of him learning ‘gandhava vidya’ as a prince and because music and dance is
mentioned in the celebrations he organised for his subjects61. The entire content of these 59 Ibid.60 (Mahapatra, 1984).61 N.K. Sahu, Kharavela (Bhubaneshvar, Orissa State Museum, 1984)
28
chapters starts from a reference to the inscription or the site and then goes into a
discussion of Shastric texts, the Natyashastra in this case. In order to rescue Kharavela
from his status as a provincial king who did not take religion as seriously as Ashoka did,
Sahu argues that Kharavela was a devout Jain who followed the precepts of Jainism for
the lay-community, and did not practice Ahimsa or poverty. For Sahu, Ashoka and
Kharavela could be seen to exhibit two very different kinds of religious toleration. He
argues that Ashoka was against music and celebrations whereas Kharavela was an avid
patron of the performing arts; for him, it is precisely in his cultural activities and
patronage of the arts that Kharavela surpassed Ashoka as a ruler. Also he says that while
Ashoka’s military campaigns were of an imperialist nature, Kharavela’s military career
was propelled by the notion of the ‘Dharma Vijaya’62.
Sahu and Mahapatra both end up also presenting a detailed account of post-Chaitanya
ascetic activity at the site which is mostly Bhakti or Sahajiya, and also enlist the
important saints and texts associated with the site. While their overall aim was to prove a
continuous Jain presence, this material obviously sits uneasily within their larger
narration. However this is the first time that this aspect of the site’s history receives any
attention at all in historical accounts. Debala Mitra, Sahu and Mahapatra are distinct
because they examined the Jain textual tradition to find any reference of Khandagiri-
Udayagiri. The problem was raised initially by Banerji who tried to like Mahavira with
the site63. Debala Mitra clearly states that no where in the Jain tradition is there a mention
of Mahavira visiting a Kumar-Kumari Parvat (Khandagiri-Udayagiri)64. Mahapatra
62 Ibid.63 (Banerji, 1931).64 (Mitra, 1960).
29
however names at least two sources which claim that Mahavira visited Orissa, however
he too is unable to actually connect Mahavira to Khandagiri-Udayagiri65.
Mahapatra deserves mention as the only historian in this list who is completely dedicated
to the cause of the Jain history of Orissa. His Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (1981),
apart from the usual formalities of talking about the inscription and the architecture, goes
on to engage with the medieval phase of construction and icon-making at the site. He
enlists each Tirthanker within each cave, presenting detailed sketches of iconography,
ornaments, clothing, reliefs, pillars, depicted characters, musical instruments and
jewellery66.In his next work, Jain Monuments of Orissa (1984), he tries to trace the
historic roots of Jainism in Orissa, he attempts to trace it to the ancient period, but all
material sculptural evidence of Jainism in Orissa begins only from the 9th century A.D.
onwards. However, he argues that Kalinga was Jain from the time before its conquest by
the Nandas or by Ashoka, and that Jainism was already popular when Kharavela was
born67. From Jain textual sources he digs up a reference of a pre-Mahavira king of
Kalinga called Karakandu who has been described as a Rajasri, an ascetic king, who gave
up the throne to lead the life of a Sramana. He assumes that the religion continued with
the invasion of the Nandas who were also Jain. Seeing the glory of a Jain Kalinga,
Ashoka had to attack and annex it; soon after Ashoka’s death, however, Kalinga regains
its freedom and Kharavela is thus then born a Jain. The Kalinga Jina he argues was
Rishabhnatha, going by the flimsy evidence that he figures prominently in the medieval
sculptures of Khandagiri68.
65 R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (D.K. Publications, 1981).66R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (D.K. Publications, 1981).67 R.P. Mahapatra, Jaina Monuments of Orissa (D.K. Publications, 1984).68 Ibid.
30
Mahapatra then tries to show through a series of conjectures, referring to inscriptional,
numismatic and textual evidence, that Jainsim co-existed with Buddhism during the
medieval period. He claims that the 7th century Chinese traveller Xuan Xang mentions
many Tirthankara images; however it is unclear if Xuan Xang is also not counting
Buddha images as Tirthankara images, because the list he presents has both Brahmanical
deities and Tirthankaras. He also tries to show the presence of Jain culture in Orissa since
antiquity by pointing out various social and religious practices which he claimed
originated from the Jains like vegetarianism, or several dates and rituals associated with
Jagannatha69. The problem with Mahapatra’s scholarship was that it could never support
its claims with adequate and authenticate scholarly evidence. Mostly, he would state one
thing and go on to draw contrary conclusions in the next line. This is especially evident
when he attempts to make a case for ancient Khandagiri-Udayagiri being an exclusively
Jain site.
To sum up, this section of the chapter has tried to chart the kinds of debates and
scholarly interpretations that have surrounded Khandagiri-Udayagiri since the inception
of archaeology in India. It has worked at demonstrating how, through various phases of
its emerging scholarship, the site came to be imbued with different historical meanings,
but almost always at the cost of either suppressing some kinds of evidence or making
arguments on the basis on inadequate evidence. In other cases, it has shown how the
methodical procedures and protocols of a discipline like epigraphy left scope for
imaginative interpretation or manipulation of the prime evidence of the Hati Gumpha
inscriptions. The site of Khandagiri – Udayagiri, by virtue of its antiquity and historical
69 Ibid.
31
value, thus become pivotal to clashes of colonial, national and regional scholarship, each
of which stake their commitment to scientificity and the demands of evidence. It will be
my argument, in the remaining part of the thesis, that despite these labours and authority
of disciplinary scholarship, they fail in the end to encompass or determine the full “truth”
of the site of Khandagiri-Udayagiri.
An Alternate History of occupation:
In this final section of the chapter, in an anticipation of the chapter that will follow, I
shall lay out the histories of the occupation of the site, as much as can be reconstructed
through surviving historical evidence, from the ancient to the early modern period. One
purpose of laying down a linear, but broken narrative, is perhaps to counter the
conclusion which Debala Mitra and R.P. Mahapatra draw almost in the same words as
each other, but separated by about two and a half decades : “ It is thus evident that the
Jain occupation of the hill was continuous if with occasional breaks, from even before the
time of Kharavela down to the present day”70. The counter narrative which I present here
does not do away with the Jain presence, which would be impossible to do, Rather, it re-
examines the obscure or weak points in the Jain narrative of the site, to tease out the
presence and activity of various other sects and religions at various points of time,
making the history of the site much more complex and multi-textured.
In the earliest phase which debatably began from somewhere in between 4th century B.C.
and 1st century A.D. and lasted till at least 8th to 10th century A.D. , not much is known
70 . Debala Mitra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri (Published by the Director General Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, Third Edition 1992) Pg 7.
32
about the inhabitants; at least in terms of sectarian affiliations there are no clear cut
indubitable proofs that, the site belonged to either the Jains or the Buddhists. However,
we can safely say, from the fact that the earliest phase is an aniconic phase that it was
probably a nirgrantha centre, that is to say that it could have been either of the Jains or
Buddhists or Ajivikas, or all three inhabiting at once. But of this period, no iconic
imagery survives, apart from relief depictions on the cave facades of tree worship, stupa
worship and images of Gajalaxmi. The fact that these images may be associated with
either of these sects points to the fact that sectarian division was not as clear cut and well
defined as it is now assumed to be, and that these sects also possibly drew on a shared
pool of beliefs and ritual, not to mention imagery. Regardless of the fact that these
schools emerged in opposition to Brahmanic ritual, for any of these sects, ritual proved
indispensible in order to keep the lay community ( and almost as often the ascetic
community) together. It should also be noted that this is the period of time when Buddhist
Tantrism is flourishing in the nearby sites of Lalitgiri, Udayagiri and Ratnagiri, and that it
is inevitable that religious practice at Khandagiri-Udayagiri would have been influenced
by it in some measure or the other. 9th century A.D. is also the broad period ascribed to
the construction of the Hirapur Chaushatti Yogini temple, which again is only about 15
kilometres away from Khandagiri – and is also the period when Bhubaneshvar itself was
becoming a strong Shaiva Tantric centre. It is then obvious that these sites were in
contact with each other and also that they probably informed and influenced each other’s
doctrines.
From the 9th to the 11th century A.D. is the high point of Jainism in Orissa; as is made
evident from the material remains. All Jain images housed in the Orissa state museum are
33
dated to this period – although, it should be emphasised that this is in no way a
postulation of the date of arrival of Jainism in Orissa. Mahapadma Nanda, who
according to literary tradition is said to have conquered Orissa, is also believed by several
historians on the basis of the interpretation of the Hathi Gumpha inscription, to be Jain
(The Nandas are anyway considered to be Jain). Inscriptions in the Lalatendu Kesari cave
and Navamuni cave inform us that all Jain iconic imagery of Tirthankaras and Sasana
Devis was installed after 1047 A.D. during the reign of king Uddyotakesari Deva. R.P.
Mahapatra claims that the Mahavira Gumpha was carved prior to 15th century but
thebasis of his dating remains unclear, with little proof, as he admits, of any kind of
monastic occupation of the site 71.
The Jain material evidence from this period, on the one hand, indubitably confirms Jain
presence at the site ( at least during the medieval period), and, on the other, brings forth
some rather pertinent questions. While it is true that the site contains imagery that is
Digambar, to what extent does the Digambar practice here during the 11th century
coincide with and differ from what is currently understood as Digambar religion? In that
period what was the function and purpose of this site within the larger configuration of
Jain institutions? This requires a much more careful and informed analysis of the iconic
Jain imagery at the site than has been already done. For example: the Navamuni Gumpha
has images of Rishabhanatha, Ajitanatha, Sambhavanatha, Abhinandananatha and
Neminatha; below them are images of Chakreshvari, Rohini, Prajnapti, Vajrasrnkhala,
Gandhari, Padmavati and Ambika. While the yakshis depicted are the most important
71 R.P. Mahapatra, Jain Monuments of Orissa (D.K. Publications, Delhi, 1984).
34
female deities in the Jain pantheon, the male Tirthankaras are not the ones usually singled
out for cultic devotion. Conspicuous by their absence are Mahavira and Shantinatha72.
Another important point is the status of the female deities. In modern day Jain imagery,
Sasana Devis are usually made as supporting background figures flanking the two sides
of a Tirthankara image (as can also be seen in the 20th century image of Rishabhanath
installed in the Khandagiri temple). Even though the female deities are depicted below
them, these figures, by virtue of being depicted in equal size, and in the case of
Lalatendu Kesari cave on an equal plane, show the Devis to be more autonomous and not
merely assisting figures. They rather seem to be hinting at the Sankhyan pairing of the
male- female principles that permeates all systems of Tantrism. While it is generally
understood that Sankhya, Buddhism, Jainism and Vedanta were different philosophical
schools, it should be noted that Sadhana or esoteric practice which is essentially what the
practice of religion is, is based on similar (if not the same) principles in all these systems,
all of them acknowledging the duality of the male and female principles within the body.
Jainism, it should be noted, is the only Indian religion that has a right-handed Tantric
practice but does not have a left-handed tradition73. In such a situation then, the question
of the nature of influence of the surrounding leftist (Vam-margi) traditions (Buddhist,
Shaiva and Yogini) on the Jain practice at Khandagiri- Udayagiri cannot be ignored.
By the 16th century we begin to have written accounts of the site in the Bhakti literature ,
now known by the name of Khandagiri – Udaygiri instead of Kumar and Kumari Parvat.
In this period, the main source for information about Khandagiri are the writings of the
Pancha-Sakhas, the famous proponents of Vaishnav Sahajiya Bhakti who rose to
72 John Cort, Mediveal Jain Goddess Tradition ( Numen, Vol. 34, Fasc. 2 ,Dec. 1987)73 Ibid.
35
prominence after the arrival of Sri Chaitanya in Orissa. Achyutananda Dasa, for one,
makes multiple references to Khandagiri in his writings, He describes it as an important
Buddhist centre, at a time when Sahajiya Buddhism was rapidly transforming into
Sahajiya Vaishnavism, this also being the time of the persecution of the Buddhists by
Raja Pratap Rudra Deo. The Panchasakhas were notable for incorporating Buddhist ideas
and practices into the Vaishnava canon. Achyutananda also mentions that Khandagiri-
Udayagiri comprised of 750 caves 74, a number which was corroborated by other late
medieval writers such as Arakhit Dasa.
According to R.P. Mahapatra, during the 18th and 19th centuries, Khandagiri was
inhabited by several notable ascetics such as Haridasa, Arakhit Dasa, Ananta Dasa, Sidha
Baranga Dasa, Mahima Gosain (a.ka. Dhaulia gosain) and Phalahari baba75. It would be
important to underline the fact that these ascetics did not represent any one particular
school or sect, even as they posed their religious practices as a counter-thesis to high
Brahmanical religion. Arakhita Dasa famously flouted all norms of pollution and purity
and propounded a non-dualistic, iconoclastic notion of religion. According to Sahu, from
1826 to 1838, Mahima Gosain, the founder of Mahima Dharma practiced Samadhi-yoga
at Khandagiri76. This sect gained a large following amidst the lower castes , sufficiently
so as to be perceived as a threat by the regional Brahmin orthodoxy; this sect too, was
founded on non-dualistic principles and shunned idol worship. In contrast to these
iconoclastic tendencies at Khandagiri; again in the 19th century was Phalahari Baba, “the
identity of whom has not been properly established, once resided in the caves and
worshipped the images of Ananta, Kisori and Vasudeva. He arranged car festivals for 74 As claimed by various sadhus. 75 R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, (D.K. Publications, Delhi 1981)76 N.K. Sahu, Kharavela, ( Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneshwar, 1984)
36
these deities every year till his death”77. Among others, two important late-medieval –
early-modern Bhakti tracts that were composed here are Brahma Kundali by Baranga Das
and Mahimandala Gita by Arakhita Das78. Even now, in the mela held at Khandagiri
during the 7th day of the month of Magh, a car carries an image called “Ananta Kesari”
from a temple in Jagmara village to Khandagiri in order to inaugurate the festival. What
is noteable is that Ananta Kesari stays actually as a ‘guest’ in the Jagmara temple which
is actually dedicated to “Raghunath”. The point which I wish to stress here is that, at least
around till the first half of the nineteenth century (till the arrival of archaeological activity
that is), Khandagiri-Udayagiri was not merely a site of devotional practices but was also
functioned as something akin to what we now would call an intellectual centre, in the
sense that it was a site where several important doctrinal texts were written, where
important debates regarding religion and social justice were being taken up and several
movements critiquing Brahmanic religion and caste society were developed or are
associated with this place.
The period from 16th century to the beginning of the 19th saw political turmoil in Orissa
and the breaking up of earlier political-geographical formations, the Ganga dynasty was
wiped out and was followed by the Afgans, the Mughals and later the Marathas.
According to Rath and Patnaik ,“ The Marathas encouraged pilgrimage to Orissa from
other parts of India, particularly in view of the growing fame of the temple of Jagannath,
making pilgrim taxes a good source of their income. Extra attention was paid to uphold
the sanctity of religious sites and shrines. Grants were allotted for the repair of
77 R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, (D.K. Publications, Delhi 1981)
78 N.K. Sahu, Kharavela, ( Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneshwar, 1984)
37
temples”79. This, it should be noted, was not limited to assisting only Hindu shrines, with
many cases of Marathas paying financial help to Muslim shrines as well. The Jain temple
on Khandagiri was constructed a decade or so before the British come to power in Orissa,
so we can reasonably conjecture that it came up against the background of Maratha aid to
religious sites and policies of taxation, and that its construction was informed by the
sectarian urge to protect one’s relics from the oncoming waves of British antiquarians,
collectors and plunderers.
In this chapter I have tried to look at Historical- Archaeological scholarship around the
site of Khandagiri and Udayagiri, through which I have tried to see how the site was
represented and appropriated by various historical imaginings. Combining the
contradictions which the various narratives present for each other I have tried to construct
a counter narrative, not one which seeks to arrive at any finality as to the history of the
site, but only one that makes the popularly accepted historical narrative uncomfortable. I
have tried to sketch out the vast period from the ancient, pre-Christian history of the site
to the modern period, till the arrival of the British.
The British came to power in the beginning of the 19th century in Orissa. Along with
them came explorers and antiquarians, creating a fresh interest in objects of history
culture and art. In the second-half of the 19th century figures like Fergusson and
Cunningham bring about Archaeological practice in India and J.D. Beglar arrives in
Orissa to conduct his surveys in 1875. The arrival of Archaeology marks a new chapter in
79 Rath and Patnaik, Orissa: History, Art and Culture (Sundeep Prakashan, New Delhi, 2008)
38
the story of occupation and performance at Khandagiri-Udayagiri; thus this shall be dealt
with in my next chapter.
39
Chapter 2: Khandagiri and Udayagiri: Inhabitations, Contestations and Touristic Performance
In this chapter, the main concern is with the production of space at the site by the
discursive practices of administration, archaeology and tourism. The first section focuses
on archaeology and on a series of contestations over rights of inhabitation of the site
between archaeological authorities and different religious sects who staked their parallel,
competing claims over spaces and structures within and outside the boundaries of
archaeological jurisdiction at the site. The second section looks at the evolving practices
of tourism, on its construction of spaces and on the kinds of performances of sightseeing,
touring, pilgrimage or worship that are enacted at Khandagiri-Udayagiri.
Arrival of ArchaeologyArchaeology and archaeologists arrive in Orissa, following a period of political
instability; which lasted from from the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century
during which the of Orissa passed from the Ganga dynasty to the Afghans, next to the
Mughals and then to the Marathas who were ousted from power finally with the rise to
power of the British within the region in 1803. Given its geographical location and dense
forests, Orissa had till this time, for the most part remained wild and scarcely explored.
Khandagiri and Udayagiri were first brought to notice in the writings of A. Sterling in
1825, which constitute the first non-missionary colonial writing on Orissa80. He mentions
80 Andrew Sterling, Orissa: It’s Geography, Statistics, History, Religion and Antiquities ( John Snow, London, 1846)
40
that Bagh Gumpha was occupied by a Vaishnava ascetic and the Jain temple was
consecrated to Parsavanath. Mention is also of several small, finely carved Jaina
sculptures scattered in the Deva Sabha on Khandagiri. After Sterling’s exploration, it was
James Fergusson who visited the site in 1836 and, writing about it, he mentions that
several ‘fakirs’ were living in the caves and would not let him examine the caves they
had occupied, and that they were ruining the caves by living and cooking inside them81.
The Archaeological Survey of India reached the site only during around 1874-76 –
following which the site is briefly described by J.D. Beglar in the 13th volume of the
A.S.I’s reports82. Long before that the site had assumed its importance on the grounds of
its ancient inscription in the Hathi Gumpha, which had been first copied by the explorer,
Lt. Markham Kittoe in 1837-38 and translated by James Princep – and it is this
inscription, its sheer antiquity and volume, which more than anything else ensured that
the site, in times to come, would never be devoid of attention from archaeologists,
historians or epigraphists. Princep was followed by Babu Rajendralala Mitra, who along
with H.H. Locke, Principal, Government School of Art, Calcutta and a team of art school
students, conducted a thorough scholarly survey and painstaking visual documentation
(though drawings, plaster casts and photographs) of the twin mountain site, alongside the
temples of Bhubaneshwar, in an encyclopaedic two-volume work, titled The Antiquities
of Orissa, that was produced for a government commission. Writing in about the 7th
decade of the 19th century Mitra says that the Jain temple at Khandagitri was a recent
construction, made about 80 years prior to his date of writing. This temple, he says, was
in the charge of a Brahman from Bhubaneshwar, who’s main task was to keep the temple
81 James Fergusson, Cave temples of India, (Allen, London, 1880)82 J.D. Beglar, Archaeological Survey of India Reports, Volume XIII (1874-75, 1875-76), (Archaeological Survey of India, Calcutta, 1876)
41
clean, and had to perform only minimal priestly functions83. He mentions the existence of
a small thatched government bungalow at the base of Khandagiri and a Bairagi Math as
well. He also claims that the caves were often visited by bears and tigers, showing that
the caves were in the jungle away from human habitation.
As is obvious, by this period, the site had come to the attention of government and was
being brought within the custodial authority and possession of the newly establishes
Archaeological Survey of India (A.S.I) As early as in March 1856, the Secretary to
Goverment of Bengal wrote in a letter to Commissioner of Orissa, requesting him to take
steps to protect the caves in the Udayagiri hill84. Receiving instructions from ASI chief
Samuells, Executive Engineer Lt. Dixon cleared up the sculptured friezes and statues of
Udayagiri Hill and repaired as far as possible the steps and paths of communication
between the caves. From a letter from G.F Cockburn to Government of Bengal, dated 8th
march 1895, we see that the mendicants were prohibited by the Magistrate of Puri from
sleeping and cooking at the place, and that, at the Magistrate’s order, they were evacuated
and dispatched to Puri85. From the annual report of the Archaeological Survey of India,
Bengal Circle, for the year 1901-1902, prepared by Theodor Bloch, the Surveyor for the
Bengal circle, we find that in that particular year the carvings in the Rani, Ganesh, Anant
and NavaMuni Gumphas were cleaned, and that the elephants outside Ganesh Gumpha
were put upright. A shade was installed over the Hathi Gumpha inscription in a bid to
protect it, which according to Bloch had “suffered badly from the effects of sun and
rain”. Significantly, during the same phases of archaeological activities at the site, a
modern temple close to Nava Muni Gumpha was pulled down as it had become unsafe. 83 Rajendralala Mitra, Antiquities of Orissa, Vol-2, ( Wyman and Co., 1875)84 R.P. Mahapatra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, (D.K. Publications, Delhi 1981)85 Ibid
42
Bloch remarks that “ the building was of no interest, and its destruction is absolutely no
loss”86.
Sraman Mukherjee, in his Ph.D thesis, entitled, Unearthing the Pasts of Bengal Bihar
and Orissa: Archaeology, Museums and History Writing in the Making of Ancient
Eastern India, 1862-1936 (Department of History, Calcutta University, 2009), talks about
how both the emerging disciplines of Indian Architecture and Indian Archaeology used
Orissa as a launching pad, because the sculpture and architecture there were considered
purely Hindu, relatively uncontaminated by Islamic influence. Regarding the emergence
of these disciplines he says : “The three points of tension – the uneasy lingering of the
‘picturesque’ lineage, the obstacles that the Western scholar had to face in studying the
practising shrines from close quarters and the ‘repulsion’ of the erotic sculptures –
defined the very ways in which the Orissan temples would be represented”87. As almost
all of the temples in Orissa that were of any historical value were ‘living’ monuments , in
the sense of their being in regular use and worship, hence access to them was denied to
the British scholar. The three factors enlisted by Sraman Mukherjee determined
accessibility and distance of what would and could be studied. While temples such as
Jagannath and Lingaraj could not be entered, the European had to resort to abandoned
temples such as the sun temple at Konarak; where the profuse erotic sculpture would
assail the scholar’s delicate Christian sensibilities and Victorian moralities, leading them
to either abhor their presence on a religious structure or to study and depict them from a
safe distance. The thesis also argues - “The de-peopling, and specifically the de-
86 T. Bloch, Annual Report Archaeological Survey of India, Bengal circle, for the year 1901-190287 Sraman Mukherjee, Unearthing the Pasts of Bengal Bihar and Orissa: Archaeology, Museums and History Writing in the Making of Ancient Eastern India, 1862-1936, ( Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Calcutta 2010) Pg 127
43
ritualisation of ancient temples were seen as desirable preconditions for the Western
scholars to subject them to their modern regimes of knowledge productions”88. It is in this
light that I will look at the eviction from the site of the ascetics in 1895. Khandagiri –
Udayagiri, It may be argued, became important for colonial archaeology not merely
because of its historical value or because of the presence of the Hathi Gumpha
inscription, but also because of the absence of any erotic imagery and the absence of
popular devotion at the site. While it was populated by ‘fakirs’ and ‘bairagis’ the site was
devoid of any Hindu worshipped image, and the holy men clearly, did not have as much
of a following as the wooden idol of Jagannatha or the stone Linga of Lingaraja. They
could be evicted with ease, as they did not have any organization or trust board
representing them nor did they, presumably, have any documents of ownership of the
site. While there was one temple on the site – the Jain temple - that was a site of
continuing, active worship, it did not pose much of a obstacle to archaeological
authorities. Khandagiri was itself away from the main city located in the jungle, and the
Jain temple was not one that was very active, except of course at the time of the annual
festival. Most importantly, there was not any significant number of Jains there, and more
importantly no Jains who were living on site in the caves. The Hindu Bairagis had a
temple on Khandagiri to stake a claim on - a temple that was there was declared decrepit
and demolished by the Surveyor, T. Bloch in 1902 .
This state of affairs on site is corroborated by Sraman Mukherjee’s observation that in the
“List of Ancient Monuments in Bengal, published by the P. W. D. of the Bengal
Government in 1896, the monuments of the Bengal Presidency were classified under
three main heads:
88 Ibid. Pg 121
44
“I. – Those monuments which, from their present condition and historical or
archaeological value, ought to be maintained in permanent good repair.
II. – Those monuments which it is now only possible or desirable to save from further
decay by such minor measures as eradication of vegetation, the exclusion of water
from the walls, and the like.
III. – Those monuments which, from their advanced stage of decay or comparative
unimportance, it is impossible to preserve…”
The monuments falling in the first two categories, which were only deemed worthy of
preservation were further subdivided into two classes:
“I (a) and II (a). – Monuments in possession or charge of Government or in respect of
which Government must undertake the cost of all measures of conservation.
I (b) and II (b). – Monuments in possession or charge of private bodies or individuals.”
Among the major monuments of costal British Orissa only a few- the caves of Khandagiri
and Udayagiri - stood eligible to be classified under sections “I (a)” or “II (a)” ”89
(emphasis added). Significantly the Jain temple at the top of Khandagiri was exempted
because it was under private ownership and under worship; also because, being a very
recent construction, it was of no archaeological or historical interest.
It was during the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon that the Ancient Monument Preservation
Act was passed in 1904 allowing the government to appropriate the site and as much
adjoining land as was required for access, fencing, covering, preservation and inspection
of “… any building or structure of a permanent nature which the Local Government
thinks it is desirable to preserve for historical or artistic reasons”90. For the purpose of
89 Ibid. Pg 305-30690 Ibid. Pg 303
45
protection of ay archaeological monument and site, the Government was to be entitled to
take up the land for “public purpose” under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. Exempted
from this were any buildings that were still in religious use and worship and any building
under private ownership which could be protected by means of a joint agreement between
the owners and government.
Thus, at Khandagiri, the Jain temple was left alone, considering its low historic value and
its ownership by a private body. This was also determined by the injunction to leave
alone structures that were under worship - an injunction that later go a long way in
deciding the nature of occupation and contestations over inhabitation at Khandagiri
Udayagiri.
Recent history and controversy
After 1902 the archives are silent for some time, and it is not until Debala Mitra’s
excavation in 1960 that there appeared to have been any major new archaeological
activity at the site. By that time, the landscape of the site in particular and the city of
Bhubaneshwar in general had begun to change at an increasing pace. With the shift of the
capital from Cuttack to Bhubaneshver in 1948, there begins a newer period of
archaeological activities in the sate of Orissa.. However this is also a period of a
controversy which is particularly interesting for in it resurfaces the long and unresolved
tension in the relationship of archaeology as a disciplinary and a governmental practice
with the historic-monumental site that was steeped in multiple religious and sectarian
affiliations. The controversy had to do mainly with the rights of occupation and worship
regarding two caves on Khandagiri hill, the Barabhuji and Mahavir Gumphas. While the
Mahavir Gumpha has relief images of Jain Tirthankaras and two small chlorite images,
46
the Barabhuji Gumpha has relief images of the Tirthankaras as well as the Sasana Devis,
including two large reliefs of twelve armed goddesses on either side of the entrance. At
present these two caves are under Hindu occupation and the twelve armed goddesses are
being worshipped as Durga and Kali. The matter was taken to court where some years
ago judgement was passed in favour of the Jain community, following which, predictably
the judgement was appealed in a higher court. The A.S.I., instead of pursuing the matter
on secular grounds of preservation and custody over these caves, chose to throw in its lot
with the Jain claimants. Thus, in this tale there are three main players: the
Archaeological Survey of India, the Jain community ( Khandagiri and Udaygiri
Digambar Jain committee) and the Hindus in the form of a collective of 12-15
committees of neighbouring villages, Jagmara and Dumduma to name two. Each group
has a different version of the ancient history of the site, which serve as legitimising
narratives on which their claims over the site are based. Based on ethnographic
interviews and pamphlets and tourist booklets, I attempt in this section to reproduce here
a conflict which has been 50 odd years or so in the making. I shall one by one put
forward the narratives of each group.
Archaeologial Survey of India
I begin with the A.S.I.’s version of the site’s history. As mentioned in the previous
presentation, the archaeological identification of Khandagiri – Udayagiri as a Jain site
depended solely on epigraphic evidence obtained by translating Kharavela’s inscription,
where it begins with the salutation “Namo Arihantanam, Namo Siddhanam” , which is
the opening line of the Jain Namokar-mantra. However, Rajendralal Mirta had
questioned this identification, saying that both these terms had currency and operation
47
within Buddhism as well91. It must also be noted that the Namokar is more of a general
salutation to spiritual masters and contains no sectarian reference whatsoever, as is
evinced by the last line of the Namokar which is “Namo Loe Savva Sahûnam”
( translatable as “ I pay my respect to all the Sadhus.” emphasis added) . While currently
the term Namokar has a definite sectarian association, this translation of the salutation
shows that the term had a freer circulation sometime in the past.
While the A.S.I. declared Khandagiri-Udayagiri to be under it’s control from 1915
onwards, however it is only with Debala Mitra’s excavation (1958-61) that A.S.I begins
its full-fledged activities on the site that have resulted in its current state. It is in this
excavation that a ramp leading to Hathi Gumpha and the remains of an apsidal structure
made from blocks of laterite stone on top of Udayagiri were uncovered. Debala Mitra,
while saying that the medieval period was the time when structural temples were made
on Khandagiri, going by remains and rubble found and attested by inscriptions,
unproblematically dated the ramp and the apsidal structure of Udayagiri to the ancient
period. The Apsidal shrine was linked to the ‘many pillared hall’ that is mentioned in
Kharavela’s inscription. Debala Mitra’s A.S.I.guidebook has come to serve ever since as
the official version of the site’s ancient and medieval history92.
The standard official, archaeologically authorised, history of the site can be briefly
summarised thus. In it, Kharavela is seen as the third and most famous king of the
Mahameghvahana dynasty, who earns glory by waging wars all over India, earns the
respect of his people by constructing civil amenities, and who despite being an eclectic
91 Rajendralala Mitra, Antiquities of Orissa, Vol-2, ( Wyman and Co., 1875)
92 Debala Mitra, Udayagiri and Khandagiri (Published by the Director General Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, Third Edition 1992)
48
who honoured all sects and repaired the temples of all gods. “ Kharavela”, Debala Mitra’s
guide book underlines, “was undoubtedly a Jain and espoused with great zeal the cause of
his faith, which appeared to have been the state religion of Kalinga”93. Kharavela’s major
contributions are said to be the retrieval of Kalinga Jina, the bringing of the Kalpa-taru
sapling and the patronising of Jain ascetics by making caves for their use and inhabitation
at Khandagiri. She however does acknowledge that, from a lack of iconic imagery
belonging to the early period, it seems likely that image worship was not prevalent in the
early period, making the identification of the so called Kalinga Jina with a Tirthankara
unlikely94.
After the decline of the Mahameghvahana dynasty, according to Debala Mitra, the
religion continued to be strong in the region despite not enjoying royal patronage. During
the period when Lakulisha- Pashupatas were displacing Buddhism from the region, this
site was “hardly affected”. Under the Somavansi kings, the second phase of activity was
carried out which can be seen today in the form of the iconic relief imagery on the
Khandagiri caves. This continues till the time of the Gajapati rulers in the 15th century
when, Debala Mitra claims, the images in cave 9 or the Mahavir Gumpha were carved95.
The date is assigned on stylistic and not epigraphic basis, on the grounds of the crude
style and execution of the reliefs. Unlike other medieval inscriptions found in renovated
caves on Khandagiri, here there is no inscription, no mention of donor, student or
spiritual master; hence no proof that ascetics were living here in the 15th century. From
here, Debala Mitra jumps directly to 1825, to Sterling’s mention of the Jain temple.
93 Ibid.94 Ibid.95 Ibid.
49
Similarly, an A.S.I. leaflet meant to provide general information about the site to tourists
says: “These hills are honeycombed with excavated rock-cut caves, essentially meant for
the dwelling retreats of Jain recluses...On the basis of inscriptional evidences, these caves
were first excavated (during the first century B.C.) by king Kharavela of the Chedi
dynasty and his successors who were also devout Jains. The Jaina occupation continued
here with occasional breaks down to the present day. The Jaina temple on top of the
Khandagiri hill, constructed in the late 19th century is under worship even at present,
preserving the continuity and tradition of the glorious past of the hill”96.
This shows that the A.S.I. is deeply invested in maintaining the fiction ( a word that must
be used as long as sufficient evidence to the contrary remains unavailable) that the site is
an exclusively Jain site and that the Jain tradition here has been continuous and unbroken.
It suggests that the Jainism, as it is practised on the site now, is the same as it was when
Uddyokta Kesari installed those images or when Kharavela first made the caves. Thereby
it de-historicises Jainism.
Regarding the management of the site and the occupation of caves, I had the opportunity
to interview Dr. H.A. Naik, the Deputy Superintendent Archaeologist, and Dr. Sushant
Kumarkar, the Assistant Archaeologist of the Bhubaneshvar circle. They said that the job
of the A.S.I. at the site and the changes it made were fairly minimal. It had to look after
concerns of preservation and undertake activities like re-making broken or collapsed
pillars in places where the structural integrity of the cave was threatened, and water
tightening of caves to arrest seepage of rain water. There were also activities resultant of
96 Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves Bhubaneshwar, (Archaeological Survey of India, Bhubaneshwar Circle)
50
opening up the site to tourists such as regular cleaning and maintenance. The horticulture
department took care of landscaping and making the site more visually appealing. The
pathways were made and broadened to facilitate the smooth movement of the traffic of
tourists, and informative signs and a translation of the all-important Hathi Gumpha
inscription were installed. In 1996 the A.S.I. introduced tickets for Udayagiri hill and by
2002 fences were installed around both the hills.
The Khandagiri hill, in striking contrast, was not a ticketed site, and its main entry gate
was left unlocked at all times because, as the two archaeologists explained, it was a
matter of national policy that on any monument where religious activity was going on,
that is, on a “living monument”, the A.S.I. did not ticket entry. The A.S.I officials said
that while both the Barabhuji Devi temple and the Laltendukesari Ashram were recent
developments, coming around or after 1960, it was not within their power to evict the
Hindu encroachers as the A.S.I. could only serve notices which had to be implemented by
the district authorities. Since the Hindu village committees enjoyed considerable political
clout locally, it had proved impossible to evict them. Despite several attempts on the part
of the A.S.I. to serve notices and to initiate action, the local authorities refused to take the
required measures97. As the matter was sub-judicial, they refused to comment on the
matter anymore. However they were very adamant in insisting that the caves were made
for, and belong to, only Jain ascetics and devotees; that anyone else such as Arakhita
Dasa or Hari Dasa living in the caves was only accidental, and that they did not belong
to the actual history of the site. They also said that they did occasionally evict Sadhus
who would occupy the caves, the last one being a Hindu ascetic called Naga Baba who 97 As both the Jain and Hindu interviewees as well as the A.S.I. official attested, local politicians would block any attempt to remove the Hindus from the cave. The local policemen too, being mostly Hindu largely backed the Hindu worship at Barabhuji cave.
51
was evicted in 2005. This last piece of information seemed doubtful to me, because I had
first met Naga Baba on Khandagiri in 2005 and for the second time in 2007, and at both
these times he was living in the Ashram at the bottom of Khandagiri (and not in a cave as
the archaeologists claim). However, in this particular visit in 2011, there was no sign of
Naga Baba and there seemed to be nobody living in that Ashram. As for Udayagiri, the
A.S.I officials claimed that the site was always un-inhabited and that the A.S.I. did not
have to evict any Sadhus in order to take control of the caves and the hill.
Regarding the legal battle over Barabhuji Gumpha. the A.S.I. did not independently
attempt to legally reclaim the cave. Rather, it backed the Jain claim to the cave and
appeared in court supporting the Jains. Apart from this, the A.S.I. on site, in several
subtle but straightforward gestures, have re-inscribed the monument as a particularly Jain
site. In front of the Hathi Gumpha, on a small stone platform, it presents a translation of
Kharavela’s inscription. It is R.D. Banerjee and K.P. Jayaswal’s translation (published in
Epigraphica Indica) which is, as is argued in the previous chapter, strongly influenced by
Jain mythology and ethical values, and presents Kharavela as a Jain monk-king. Behind
the installed translation is a large swastika, the Jain symbol par-excellence made by
trimming a hedge. The A.S.I. making large reproductions of sectarian symbols using
horticultural technology is unprecedented at least within the limits of my personal
experience of A.S.I. controlled monuments. A large visible signification such as that
clearly stresses the Jain history of the site. However, it is on the notice-board at the
entrance, that the A.S.I most clearly articulates and drives dome its Jain identification of
the site. It reads : “The twin hills contain excavated rock cut caves called lena in the
inscription and are essentially dwelling retreats of the Jaina ascetics....The depiction of
52
the 24 Thirthankaras and their Sasanadevis in the Barabhuji cave, Gajalaxmi, Surya (?),
Swastika and Nandipada symbol in Anant Gumpha in relief are noteworthy achievement
in early Indian art”.
Apart from the glaring error whereby all medieval images were called achievements of
early Indian art, what this notice does are two things - firstly, it states that the images are
Jain and not Hindu; secondly, it claims the images not as products of Indian religion but
as products of Indian Art; thereby relocating them in a modern secular discursive field.
To summarise, the A.S.I.’s stance is a dual positioning, One stance is vis-a-vis the
Hindus, where it claims the site to be exclusively Jain, supported by a particularly
befuddling claim of a ‘continuous tradition with occasional breaks’98; the other
positioning is against the Jain claim over the site where it re-locates the antiquities
(architectural or sculptural) from a religious to an art historic discourse.
As Neil Asher Silberman says in his book, Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples: the
Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative, “… in either case, the battle over
archaeological public interpretation must be seen for what it is: a struggle for power
between rival groups in the fluid conditions of an emerging nation state. Archaeological
remains when preserved and presented to the public, are almost always monuments either
to generalised notions of progress or someone’s inalienable historical and political
rights”99. (emphasis added)
The Jains:
98( Mitra, 1960)99 Neil Asher Silberman, The politics and poetics of Archaeological narrative, Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Kohl and Fawcett (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Great Britain, 1995), Pg- 258.
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The Jain narrative of the history of the site performs several slippages from history into
myth and back into history. The starting point is obviously historic whereby the caves are
credited to Kharavela and dated to 2100 years ago through epigraphic analysis. An
informative notice painted at the door of the Jain temple at Khandagiri claims that king
Kharavela spread the boundaries of his kingdom to Sri Lanka in the south, Gujrat in the
west and Takshashila (Afganistan) in the North-East. He re-established the image of
Rishabha Deva, the Kalinga Jina on Khandagiri. A booklet titled Khandagiri-Udayagiri
Caves, published by Ladadevi Granthamala, Kolkata; made available at the Jain
dharmashala, presents a Digambar Jain history of Khandagiri and Udayagiri. Roughly
translated it says ‘Khandagiri and Udayagiri is an ancient and important Digambar Jain
site. The patron of Digambar Jain Dharma, the glorious king Kharavela made these caves
for Digambar Jain ascetics about 2300 years ago’100.
The booklet presents a brief narrative of the ancient history of Orissa, crudely derived
from the Hathi Gumpha inscription: Magadha and Kalinga were two opposing powers.
Even before Ashoka’s conquest of Kalinga, the state religion was Jain. Kalinga opposed
Magadha’s increasing expansionist policies as a result the Nanda kings conquered
Kalinga, one of the Nanda kings took back the Kalinga Jina image to Pataliputra. Slowly
Kalinga became so rich and glorious that Ashoka was forced to conquer it even at
excessive costs. Kharavela in turn successfully waged war against Magadha as a result of
which the Kalinga Jina and Jain religion was re-established in Kalinga. Interestingly this
narrative locates a certain moral necessity in Kharavela’s actions, projects him as an
avenging hero who rights historic wrongs. The preface of the booklet, stresses the historic
100 T.N. Ramachandran, Babu Chotelal Jain, Khandagiri-Udayagiri Caves, (Ladadevi Granthamala, Kolkata, 2003), back cover.
54
and academic importance of the site and how the inscriptions reveal much historically
useful information about unknown aspects of India’s history. It also stresses that the
inscription should be translated into various languages and the epigraphic and the stylistic
aspects of the site should be looked at from the perspective of various disciplines:
linguistic, cultural, sociological, geographical, philosophical and historical101. It laments
that under the care of the A.S.I. the site’s upkeep is being ignored whereas the Jain
institution is powerless to take steps for its preservation. While the site has all
requirements for being an International Heritage site, it is because of the A.S.I.’s inaction
that the site, in its opinion, is currently in such a bad shape.
This writing also claims that the reliefs on the larger caves depict incidents from Jain
mythology, without specifying the exact stories which are represented102. A particular
relief in Manchpuri where worshipping is depicted is interpreted as the re-installation of
the Kalinga Jina after it was retrieved by Kharavela. Ironically, while speaking the
scientific language of stylistic analysis, it cannot help but constantly refer back to
Buddhist sites such as Sanchi and Bharhut to talk about Khandagiri’s sculptural reliefs.
The text talks about it’s immediate context and this is particularly revealing. “In recent
development, the Kalinga Jina image mentioned in king Kharavela’s inscription was with
due pomp and ritual installed on a new seat on Khandagiri hill, this marks a new dawn in
the golden chapter of the history of Jain sculpture and also now proves that king
Kharavela installed the image of the Kalinga Jina on Khandagiri by constructing a
magnificent temple. ( however that magnificent structure till now hasn’t been found, and
101 Ibid.102 R.P. Mahapatra in 1984 carefully analyzes the imagery, even though his narrative was pro-Jain he admitted that though the story had some resemblances with the biography of Rishabhanatha, the differences were too stark for it to be the same narrative.
55
the image that has been found still awaits analysis and confirmation by archaeological
experts)”103. Such an example of near perfect appeal to, and rejection of, scientific history
in the same breath is rare indeed.
While the apsidal structure later uncovered by Debala Mitra was unproblematically
proclaimed as Kharavela’s Jinalaya, the image installed as the Kalinga Jina in the temple
can not, by even the most imaginative of archaeologists, be termed as anything else but
Medieval. The identification of the Kalinga Jina as Rishabha Deva is something that
cannot be arrived at by scientific historic methods. The other grossly incorrect fact was
that of Kharavela being a patron of Digambar Jainsim. In fact the Digambar-
Shweatambar split in the jain religion does not happen till after Kharavela104. Bannerjee
and Jayaswal also translate him as having donated white cloth to monks.Thus these texts,
while claiming affiliation to scientific history, take adequate liberties with it, with the
express aim to impose their own cultic identity over the larger history of the site.
However the heaviest argument employed by the Jains is that the site has been claimed as
a Siddha Sthana. The Jains claim that during his travels through Orissa, Mahavira passed
through Khandagiri and here he made 499 disciples, who stayed at the site ( in express
disobedience of Mahavira’s injunction to constantly travel!!!) and when Mahavira left his
body and his soul left for the void these 499 disciples also from Khandagiri left their
bodies and accompanied Mahavira. Since 499 Jain monks achieved Nirvana from this site
therefore the site has special status as a Siddha-sthal or sacred ground for the Jains. Each
103 Ibid, Pg. 9104 Historians of Jainism are unclear as to when exactly the split takes place, there seems to be no decisive moment, rather the first clue was an Tirthankara image wearing clothes which could be roughly dated to the 5th century of the Christian era.
56
of these 499 monks is symbolically represented as a pair of feet inside a lotus and
worshipped in the temple.
However, while there is mention of Mahavira visiting Kalinga, in Jain texts, there seems
to be no mention of Khandagiri-Udayagiri or Kumar/ Kumari parvat in particular and
definitely no mention of the 499 monks achieving liberation. Even a writer such as R.P.
Mahapatra who was sensitive to Jain textual sources does not mention it, Debala Mitra
clearly denies any mention of Khandagiri-Udayagiri in Jain textual tradition. One can say
that in all probability the story is a latter day fabrication made to serve certain
instrumental purposes.
As such, there are no Jains living in Bhubaneshvar, with Jains staying mostly in
Choudhary Bazzar and nearby areas in Cuttack. Apart from this temple on Khandagiri,
there are no other major Jain pilgrimage spots in Orissa. Most pilgrims visit from
Southern India or Madhya Pradesh and visit Khandagiri on their return from Parsavanath,
Samya Sikhar in Bihar. There is also a fair number of pilgrims who come from Gujarat or
Rajasthan.
The main temple was built about 200 years ago, and the smaller temples to its side were
built after 1940. Similarly the Dharmashala was built sometime 70 or 80 years ago. The
charitable homeopathic dispensary was started in 1958. During the Magh Saptami mela,
the Jains inaugurate the mela by carrying the so called ‘Kalinga Jina’ image in a Vimana
( cart) to the Hathi Gumpha under Kharavela’s inscription. When asked if the Jains had
been worshipping the Barabhuji images before the Hindus had appropriated them, Shree
Santosh Kumar Jain , the manager of Cuttack’s Chowdhary Bazar Jain Lal Mandir, said
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that because the images are reliefs and not icons, and are not given the status of deity. A
relief image’s ‘pranaprathishtha’ ( its animation or bringing to life) cannot be performed.
Therefore they were never sacred images to begin with.
The Hindus
Since there was no printed material regarding the Hindu claims to the site, I had to gather
information through interviews, and the opinions did vary from institution to institution.
Lalatendukesari Aashram: The Lalatendukesari ashram is a temporary structure built in
front of the Lalatendukesari Gumpha, housing a ‘perpetual fire’ – a dhuni105. The dhuni
was attended by an ascetic who introduced himself as Birinchi Baba, he claimed that the
dhuni had been burning here since ‘ancient times’. He narrated a mythic account of
Khandagiri’s history, which, unlike the Jain narrative, did not use historic facts as
stepping stones, but rather used mythology to refer to or even sometimes explain
historicity. He started with saying that Bhubaneshvar is another name of lord Shiva, the
city is named after him but in truth the city is actually Nemisharanya, Lord Shiva’s
residence which extends to a radius of 22 kos with the Lingaraja temple as the centre
point. Khandagiri at the outer reaches of the Nemisharanya is the Ekambrakanan, the
‘meditation retreat’ of lord Shiva. The Ekambrakanan is mentioned in the Skanda Purana
and Siva Purana. Kartikaya was born on the hill, which is why the hill was called
Skandhagiri which got colloquialised into Khandagiri. This, incidentally, also explains
the medieval name of the site : Kumar Parvat, Kumar and Skanda both being Kartikeya’s
names.
105 Which the editor of the Jain booklet : Khandagiri-Udayagiri caves calls a source of pollution.
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He went on to claim that Kharavela was not a Jain but a Shaivite – also that Jainism was
not a separate religion but was a part of the Sanatan Dharma. A similar opinion had been
voiced by Smt. Bimladevi Jain, the manager of the Jain dharamshala when she identified
Rishabhnatha with Shiva, whereas here Birinchi Baba was identifying him with Vishnu.
According to him, it was because of the increasing corruption and greed among the
Brahmins that lord Vishnu had to incarnate himself as Buddha and Jain. When asked, he
said that the famous bhakti poet Jagannatha Dasa had written that Rishabhnatha was an
avatar of Vishnu. Further he said that the Lalatendukesari Ashram was mentioned by
Achyutananda Dasa as being a nodal place where the 12 armed goddess protects all.
Finally he claimed that Lalatendukesari himself did penance here for 12 years and that he
would hold conferences with various other saints.
Barabhuji Gumpha: In the Barabhuji Gumpha/temple, I spoke to Baamdeb Das, a
priest. He claimed that Hindus had been worshipping the devi at Barabhuji since ancient
times. Again, he also claimed that Hinduism and Jainism were not different religions, the
Jains, he said, called the devis Chakreshwari and Shankheshwari which was proof enough
of them being Hindu goddesses since the chakra and shankha were associated with
Vishnu. In the name of the temple several structural changes had been made to the cave,
walls had been collapsed and pillar re-constructed. The floor had been opened up and re-
laid with marble about 20 -30 years ago, whereas the terrace in front of the temple,
making a large courtyard is an older construction, possibly around the time of the Jain
temple’s construction. The images of the Sasanadevis and Tirthankars in the Barabhuji
Gumpha had been painted black, obviously to reduce their visibility. A stay order from
court now prevents further defacement of the images.
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His claim was that the Jain temple was consecrated in 1934 and prior to that it was a
Hindu temple, housing a Vishnu image called Ananta Kesari, which still visits the site
every year during the mela from a temple in Jagmara where it stays as a guest. Regarding
the small empty temple above Mahavir Gumpha, he said to the best of his knowledge it
had always been empty and no one knew about it. When asked if a pranaprathistha was
performed for the images before they were worshipped by the Hindus, since the Jains
consider that relief images cannot be consecrated, the priest said that since the images
were very old they probably had been consecrated sometime in the past, but no such
ritual had been done within recent memory (the Jains at least, if not the Hindus, believe
that if an image has not been worshipped for a considerable period of time then it should
be re-consecrated before is it worshipped again). During my documentation of the site, I
witnessed a Jain householder-priest offering rice grains and obeisance to all relief images.
I also witnessed an argument between the Jain and the Hindu priest regarding the
covering of the images. The Hindu claimed it was improper to worship a naked image
while the Jain claimed that, in case of the Tirthankars, it was their nakedness which
signified their holiness.
The Hindu priest’s account was more or less reproduced by Sri Debendra Subudhi the
secretary of the village committee of Dumduma village, one of the 15 surrounding
villages that consider Barabhuji to be their Ishta-devi. He too said that Hindus had been
worshipping Barabhuji since ancient time, but the controversy over the cave was 30 or 40
years old106. Further, to the south he said was Dadhibawan Deb in Ayaginiya village, to
the west was Gopal Jew in Syanpur village, to the north Narsinghnath in Tapovan
106 According to the editor of the Jain booklet, Khandagiri-Udayagiri Caves, the occupation of the caves occurred 40 years ago.
60
Ashram and in the east was Raghunath in Jagmara village; in the centre of all of this was
Ananta Kesari who was established at Khandagiri. According to Sri Subudhi, the Jains
took over the Vishnu temple and dedicated it to Rishabhnatha, whereby Ananta Kesari
had to stay in Raghunath’s temple in Jagmara as a ‘guest’.
Paduka Aashram: The Paduka Ashram belongs to followers of the sage Arakhit Das and
are quite unconnected to the Barabhuji controversy. Unlike the others who always seem
to start with 2000 years ago, the Avadhoot sadhus are quite aware of their own historicity
and acknowledge that their sect came into being only after Arakhita Dasa, who was a
fairly recent figure. The Ashram itself was built sometime in the 1970s during the
stewardship of the previous Mahant, late Sadhu Uddhav Das. While the Ashram had a
fair amount of land holdings scattered across Bhubaneshvar, it was in this period that
members of the trust board betrayed the trust and fraudently sold much of the land for
personal benefit, including a piece of land right next to the current Ashram which was
sold to the Jain Dharamshala. The Mahant promptly filed a case against the Jain
committee as the land contained funerary memorials of previous Mahants. As of now, the
samadhis have been demolished and structures have come up on them, however the
Dharamshala is not able to raise its boundary wall because of the court case. The current
Mahant, Sadhu Dambru Das who has been associated with the site for over 40 years says,
that earlier the ashram was a mud structure that functioned like a base camp where
Sadhus would report and where Arakhit Das’s wooden slippers and manuscripts would
lie on a wooden charpoy, whereas most of the sadhus would live in the Udayagiri caves,
that too, a numerically significant amount of them. But that began to change 30-35 years
ago, when the A.S.I. began to evict the sadhus from the caves, and it is approximately at
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the same time the ashram was remade with brick and cement. After which slowly one by
one various idols and shrines were added to it. Only one shrine is credited to a Mahant
previous to Uddhav Das, the Kali shrine is credited to Sadhu Bhalu Das but it is unclear if
he built the cement shrine or if he just installed the image there. By the 80’s urbanisation
had come to Bhubaneshvar and by the mid-90’s the city had spread as far as upto
Khandagiri.
From all of this we can gather two things: first, that there was a Vishnu temple on
Khandagiri but it was not the Jain temple; and second, that Udayagiri was not a secular
site devoid of religious activity, waiting for the archaeologist and art-historian to
excavate, conserve and recover its ancient glory. For the first, we know from Sterling,
Fergusson and Rajendralal Mitra’s accounts that even in the 19th century the temple on
top of Khandagiri was a Jain temple, the consecration that the Hindus refer to as having
happened in 1934 was probably the installation of the so- called ‘Kalinga Jina’. Ananta
Kesari then was probably housed in the smaller structure above Mahavir Gumpha, which
would go some way to explain the stone terrace in front of Mahavir and Barabhuji
gumphas. Ananta Kesari is again probably the same image that Phalahari Gosain
worshipped and carried out in cart festivals .This structure is again, possibly the same
structure which was demolished by T. Bloch, however, it can be conjectured that it was
not actually demolished but rather de-sanctified and the image sent to Jagmara. Sometime
later the temple was renovated but its garbagriha was plastered over, and a stone bench
was installed inside in the shape of a L.
Secondly, the Archaeological Survey officials’ claim that Udayagiri did not have a living
religious tradition, is largely false. It was, asI have shown, very much a living site,
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except that the A.S.I.’s parameters for ‘religious activity’ were configured only to
Brahmanical idol worship. Sadhus living inside caves never appeared in the A.S.I.’s
registers as religious activity, it only appeared as “trespassing”, whereas the Hindu
worship of an unsanctified wall relief in Khandagiri was recognised as religious activity
which could not be disturbed. Udayagiri was thus, then cleansed and secularised.
Religion in Khandagiri-Udayagiri was pushed back and by definition forced to reside
between the priest- idol nexus.
This narrative also raises many questions as to the role of Archaeological Survey with
regard to permissions and restrictions, inclusions and exclusions, concerning buildings
and habitations on the site. What becomes evident is the Survey is not neutral with
regards to various sectarian occupations on the site, with some clearly more permissible
than others. However we can also see a wide spectrum of inhabitation at Khandagiri and
Udayagiri, from institutions backed by the Archaeological Survey, such as the Jain
Mandir and Dharamshala, to those backed by local power interests such as the Barabhuji
Mandir and to some extent the Paduka Aashram. Then, there are more liminal of
occupations, mostly at an individual level, their existence made possible only because of
the rifts created by the conflicts between the larger religious and administrative
institutions controlling the site. Apart from this, there are a whole range of touristic
performance and appropriation that goes on at the site. The construction of space, the
politics of inclusion and exclusion and the performance of tourism are discussed in the
last section of the chapter.
Tourist performances and the construction of space
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This section examines Khandagiri-Udayagiri’s status as a locus of tourist activity and
inversely how tourism through certain modes of ordering space produces Khandagiri-
Udayagiri. I base my analysis on a theorisation of tourism done by Tim Edensor in his
book Tourists at the Taj. In this book, he attempts to put forth a theory of tourism which
focuses on specific genealogies of the relationships between visitors and sights and
refrains from any universal theorisation, since tourism itself is a set of constantly
changing practices. He says “tourism cannot by typified under one motivation, social
function or social condition. Rather it consists of a range of practices and epistemologies
which emerge out of particular cultural locations”107. According to him, global marketing
produces a distinct tourist space on a global scale, that is liable to be commodified in
distinct ways and organised with particular material characters such as the proliferation of
a ‘Mall’ space, where a space of leisure and consumption is produced trans-culturally on
a global scale deploying the same sense of aesthetics and spatial arrangement. The
landscaping and beautification of historic and touristic sites may be seen in the same
light. He observes that contemporary production of tourism involves commodification of
particular spaces and cultures. According to him, “in a globalising capitalist economy, the
predominant material production of space involves the organisation of built environments
that facilitate the flow of profit, goods, money, labour, communication and
information”108; with these processes coming into play, places are no more configured by
a cultural belonging but rather as “ bundles of social and economic opportunities
competing against one another”109.
107 Tim Edensor, Tourists at the Taj ( London, Routledge, 1998) Pg 3.108 Ibid, pg 10109 Ibid, Pg 11
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For our present purposes, it will suffice to address two major questions that Edensor
addresses, the first dealing with the positioning of a site within various imagined
geographies whereby the site is prepared for consumption by various kinds of audiences
and secondly the question of the regulation of the tourist space and tourism as a range of
performances.
Imagined Geographies
According to Edensor, the construction of tourist attractions and the marketing of places
entail the production of certain kinds of historical narratives which affects certain kinds
of audiences and attracts them as visitors, and only those features of the site that endorse
these narratives are highlighted. The movement and duration of visit of the tourists is
determined by this packaging. Here it is important to note that one is not talking of any
singular narrative of commodification. There are rather, multiple strategies, and at one
particular site, different commercial interests may come into opposition; or
commodification may begin to contrast with administrative and political objectives.
While international tourism in one of the most important sites for the contemporary
production of the local, this process of the production of representation may occur at
local levels as well. Often global processes must be worked out through specifically
local capital, classes and practices. In the case of Khandagiri-Udayagiri, there are various
commodifications at work, the administrative and political being just one of them as the
discussion in the first section indicated. Its marketing to a global audience is done
through the specificity of Orissa Tourism and by clubbing it within the same cultural
ethos as the 7th to 13th century A.D. temples of Bhubaneshvar, both being touted as
outstanding examples of ‘Orissan Art’. While this narrative is questioned by a more local
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narrative of the Hindu claim over the site, represented by the local political clout and
local capital, it is also in turn brought into question by the ascetic element and their
connection to the site. However all these co-habit the same space and appeal to different
or partially overlapping market segments. While seemingly challenging each other, they
also significantly validate and supplement each other. These narratives function by
locating the site within certain imagined geographies, namely the colonial, the sacred and
the national.
The colonial: the production of tourist space is not a new activity but can be
understood as an expansion of inscribing power through the materialisation of
bourgeois ideology since the 19th century. Tourism and the study of archaeology
both derive from the practice of the ‘grand tour’ that was prevalent among the 19th
century colonialists, it emerges from a western longing to experience the
‘otherness’ of various cultures. In a neo-colonial setting it is assumed that it is the
right of wealthy westerners to travel third world countries in order to experience
this ‘otherness’. In terms of techniques or representation, seeing and ordering of
experience, contemporary tourism finds its roots in colonial technologies. The
establishment of colonial cities was always designed around spatial expression of
power and difference. They were divided into European and native quarters,
where the European section of the town would be well planned and visually
ordered, where inter-mixing of races was limited. Contemporary tourism re-
produces these tropes of spatial organisation as well. Edinsor talks about enclavic
and heterogeneous space which reflects the division of the city into European and
native quarters. The spatial arrangement can be seen on site - as Udayagiri is
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configured as a well defined and ordered space, its historical and archaeological
importance flaunted to promote it into a site ‘worth seeing’. Another significant
carry-over from the colonial approach is the idea of preservation, where some
sites were deemed more deserving of preservation than others. In contemporary
tourism, this is seen instead as the rating of the monument, whereas caves like
Ajanta and Ellora are considered by the Archaeological Survey as A grade sites
and have received the status of world heritage sites from UNESCO, Khandagiri-
Udayagiri by its rather evident lack of grandiosity has been labelled a B-grade
site. Currently a tourist centre is under construction on an empty plot of land
behind Udayagiri hill. Built in a circular shape, reflecting the unique architecture
of the 64 Yogini temple, the centre is to provide a leisure experience aimed at
foreign tourists also at upper class elite Indian tourists, providing for services like
shopping, restaurants, cafes etc .An Incredible India tourist brochure for Orissa
says “ Orissa a land of quintessential charm, with its natural bounties, gracefully
blends old world splendour with modern day developments. With nature abounds
in all its glory with its unspoilt and alluring beaches, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, hills,
forests, wildlife, and tribal culture, which is still vibrant with its unique lifestyle ,
Orissa is impressive with its rich tradition of art, architecture and sculpture. A
visual feast of colours varieties and surprises, a cultural journey into one of the
oldest civilisations in the world and as a holiday destination, Orissa promises a
wonderful experience”110. The text obviously filters out all those aspects of Orissa
that do not conform to the western tourist’s idea of a realm of leisure. It also
subsumes a lot of different things under the ambiguous umbrella of Orissan
110 Department of Tourism, Government of India.
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culture. Khandagiri-Udayagiri becomes central to this touristic discourse, not
because of the aesthetic quality of its architecture or sculptures but only because
of its age value. Its age value is what allows for proclamations such as those of
being ‘one of the oldest civilisations in the world’. Central to the production of
tourist spaces is the notion of otherness, where such spaces would be configured
as realms of ‘lost innocence’111, there then is always the anxiety of the ‘authentic’
culture being replaced by western progress. This anxiety can also be made out in
the brochure quoted above, where it claims Orissa to be a graceful blend of “old
world splendour with modern day developments”. However the desire to present
an authentic culture, or a graceful blend of the old and the new worlds, can also
go a long way in explaining the presence of the ascetic in the Paduka Aashram at
Udayagiri or the Jain temple on Khandagiri, within a space otherwise controlled
by the Archaeological Survey.
Sacred: As Edensor points out, in the Hindu cosmological scheme, as sacred
places are mapped throughout the country, these sacred places are conceived of
being located in the earthly realm but as intersections between heavenly and
earthly realms. These places are weaved together to make pilgrimage routes.
Speaking in sectarian terms there are at least three sacred geographies that
intersect at this site. The first being the Jains who claim that not only did the site
host a sacred relic (that too one that has supposedly been recovered) but also that
Mahavira himself came and taught here, and that 499 of his disciples left their
bodies and entered into Nirvana with him as he left his body. For the Jains any
111 Tim Edensor, Tourists at the Taj ( London, Routledge, 1998) pg 26.
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place where a Tirthankara visits is considered holy and one from where a
Tirthankara or a monk passes into Nirvana is considered especially holy as it may
energise the unenlightened to take the holy path as well. Khandagiri, thus is
visited by many Jains, pilgrims and tourists alike, it is connected to Parsavanath,
Sammad Shikhar in Bihar, the enlightenment spot of Parsavanatha, the 23rd
Tirthankara, from where many visitors from Southern or Western India travel to
Khandagiri-Udayagiri. At a local scale, fifteen villages surrounding Khandagiri-
Udayagiri have begun to worship a Jain Goddess image in Barabhuji gumpha as
Durga and consider her the patron deity of their villages, the Barabhuji takeover
also allows the Hindus to stake a claim over a symbolic site, which allows for an
assertion of the ancientness of their identity also for the considerable economic
opportunities that inter-state and inter-national tourism attracts. This takeover has
also gone beyond an innocent act of several villages worshipping an ancient
image and having attachment and reverence for it but also local power, authorities
and politicians as well as local capital has begun to back it. There is also a sacred
geography which these local villagers place Khandagiri into when they think of it
as the spot where the image of Ananta Kesari used to reside, as a center point in a
map of four other Vishnu images located in the four cardinal directions. Every
year during the Magh Saptami mela, Ananta Kesari is returned to Khandagiri and
worshipped. It is perhaps to keep alive the image’s connection to the site that it
only stays as a guest in the Jagmara temple and has not been re-established in a
structure of its own. Finally the site is also important to the followers of the sects
of Mahima Dharma and Arakhit Dasa. Mahima Gosai, it is recorded performed
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Samadhi yoga in Khandagiri-Udayagiri for several years. Khandagiri is also one
of the three important sites associated with Arakhita Dasa - it is here, in the
Ananta Gumpha, that he was supposed to have attained Siddhi or perfection. Thus
the Magh Saptami mela also attracts many of the followers of this sect. The
Paduka Ashram at the base of Udayagiri houses his wooden sandals and
manuscripts, apart from ascetics of the order.
The National: According to Edensor, “The notion of national space is
consolidated by symbolic sites, national landscapes and the existence of
supposedly archetypal objects and scenes which populate national space”112.
These national imaginings consist of one monolithic narrative within which
certain iconic symbolic sites are placed, mapping out the nation in its historic
terrain. For example the Taj Mahal or the Konarak temple, or the India Gate, Lal
Quila etc are such archetypically symbolic sites, which in themselves stand in for
the nation and also in another respect are symbolic of certain aspects of the
nation’s cultural history. National power appropriates the symbolic sites of Orissa
precisely by constructing a narrative of Orissan history and appending it as a part
of the larger narrative of the history of India113. This refers back to our discussion
about the politics of various kinds of archaeological scholarship in the first
chapter. The conjunction point by which the history of Orissa is linked to the
history of India is Ashoka’s conquest of Orissa - whereby the site most important
for nationalist history becomes the Dhauli hill and its Ashokan inscription. By
that token, Khandagiri-Udayagiri becomes simply the inscriptional site of a 112 Ibid, Pg 36.113 All this is of course made possible by positing immortal trans-historical subjects such as ‘Orissa’ and ‘India’ who’s histories can be written in one straight flowing line.
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provincial king, a poor man’s Ashoka, however which compensates for the lack of
artistic activity at Dhauli, by giving us a glimpse of artistic activity from a
neighbouring historical period. With this line of reasoning, we can also see some
logic behind the A.S.I’s propagation of the site as a Jain site. Positing it as Jain
situates it within a national Jain pilgrimage network, where it commands a fairly
important place, for the site within Hindu pilgrimage networks could never be as
important, where it would always be a stop-over site on the way to Lingaraja or
Puri, but never be significantly important on non-local Hindu pilgrimage
networks. As for Buddhism, the site could not be touted as a Buddhist site for that
would disrupt the larger Hindu narrative of Orissa’s history where Buddhism
appears as a later decadent Tantric phase, precisely because then one would have
to acknowledge an aniconic phase of Buddhism, which would obviously raise
questions about Buddhism in Orissa, pre-dating Ashoka.
These are the imagined geographies within which Khandagiri-Udayagiri has been
situated in order for it to function as a contemporary tourist site. Next I discuss how the
physical space of the site itself is ordered and the kinds of performances of tourism it
enables.
The Performance of Tourism:
Edensor thinks of tourism as a range of performances, which are always relational to the
ways in which the stage, i.e. the tourist site has been prepared, organised through the
action of power. Using Foucault’s notion of “heterotopia”, he talks about two kinds of
tourist space: the Enclavic and the Heterogenous. The Enclavic space is marked by
external surveillance, strict modes of entry, exit; inclusion and exclusion; it is visually
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ordered towards a particular end and unwanted sights, sounds, smells and people are
excluded, to ensure a uni-directed aesthetic experience. A heterogenous space is not so
strictly regulated and hence allows for a wider variety of performances and a plethora of
sights, sounds, smells and touches. However, an Enclavic space, even though regulated
still allow for transgressions, if not openly then through covert means. However we must
also remember that sites of pleasure like theme parks, fairs, sea side resorts, etc, are
commodified landscapes which even though seeming to promise infinite variety, but this
is a manufactured and controlled diversity rather than a realm of unconstrained social
difference114.
Merely by a cursory glance we can see that power does not operate homogenously on
Khandagiri and Udayagiri - both the hills are configured differently. While it would be
all too easy to simply classify Udayagiri as an Enclavic space and Khandagiri as a
Heterogenous space, what is actually needed is a closer examination of the kinds of
performances and restraints that are in place on these two hills. The idea of a
manufactured and controlled diversity over and above a realm of unconstrained social
difference then becomes the key to understanding the paradoxical co-existence of
contrary institutions such as the A.S.I. and the Paduka Ashram, the Jains as well as the
Hindus. While there is opposition, disagreement and difference, it is controlled, managed
and tolerated in ways that allows the site to interlink many imagined geographies at once.
Udayagiri, is the ticketed hill, and its boundaries are more strictly policed, visitors can
only visit and see the site at certain pre-designated timings. The hill his carefully
maintained and cleaned, pathways are periodically repaired and broadened to facilitate
114 Tim Edensor, Tourists at the Taj ( London, Routledge, 1998) Pg 48.
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the smooth flow of visitors. Within the designated area of tourist activity, the natural flora
of the hill is removed and is replaced with decorative plants, carefully trimmed and
maintained, which infused the site with a semblance of a standardised, landscaped global
aesthetic of tourist sites. Even though the Paduka Ashram has a separate entry leading
onto the hill, they close their gates right about the time Udayagiri hill officially closes for
visitors. The Ashram’s gate leading onto the hill is for two main purposes. The first is to
allow the tourists visiting the hill to come and have darshan of the relics of Arakhita
Das’s relics and obtain blessings from the ascetics housed there and give them monetary
donations, by the virtue of which the Ashram is able to function. The other use for the
gate is that since the Ashram does not have a toilet, early morning, before tourists start
arriving, the inmates use the gate to go up onto the hill into the wooded regions for their.
Since they are careful to respect both the temporal and spatial boundaries of the tourist
space, their activity cannot be called subversive but co-exists rather well with the
Enclavic touristic agenda of the site. Many people come to see the caves and a natural
extension of which is to see Sadhus as well, it is essential to maintain the authenticity of
the site. Caves without Sadhus would be as inauthentic as temples without idols. But that
this co-existence is Enclavic and mediated by power is evident by the fact that the Sadhus
may be seen next to the caves, but the Sadhus may never actually use the caves. The
Ashram itself is a heterotopic site, some come there to offer devotion some to conduct
business, some to do Kirtan, some to smoke marijuana and then some to drink. Some of
those who offer devotion belong to an idol-worshipping paradigm and other to a non-idol
worshiping, yogic paradigm.
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As far as performance of the visitors is concerned, both the hills have marked similarities
and differences. On both the hills the caves are sequenced and numbered and most of the
tourists follow the laid out pathways. Apart from sight seeing and photographing, there
are several other uses that the site is put to by the visitors. First-year and second-year
students from the nearby B.K. College of Art and Craft come to paint water colour
landscapes, for which the caves make a rather enigmatic subject115. Apart from them,
there are romancing couples who seek privacy in the lesser frequented, wooded parts of
the hills and then there are also groups which come to play cards, or drink alcohol or
both. These activities, and such other peripheral uses, occur on both Khandagiri and
Udayagiri, but since Udayagiri is a time-bound ticketed and site and Khandagiri is not, on
Khandagiri these activities carry on well into the night. Groups of people or families on
picnic can often light a fire and cook their food on Khandagiri which they cannot do on
Udayagiri. Khandagiri by virtue of being a site without policed entry, is more welcoming
towards the marginal. Some of the caves are used by beggers to sleep in during the night.
Ekadashi Gumpha which is considerable away from the tourist area on Khandagiri is
occupied, for the last few years by a local Marijuana dealer. One interesting phenomenon
is to see how visitors to the site, engaging in religious performances, invoke an ancient
topography of the site as narrated by archaeological scholarship. On the crest of
Udayagiri next to the excavated apsidal structure and on the crest of Khandagiri behind
the Jain temple, many visitors have begun to tie small weights with a thread onto
branches of a specific tree and underneath the tree piling up small stones one on top of
115 This almost institutional exercise, in my opinion a serious impact in framing the kind of questions the students and alumni use to form their work. A noticeable trend among art practitioners emerging from this college is to attempt to locate some sort of authentic ‘Indian-ness’ in their work; or to juxtapose authentic ‘Indian-ness’ with modern abstraction.
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another to make small votive Stupas. The tying of the thread onto the tree is an act of
making a wish, which clearly refers back to the mention of the Kalpa-taru, the wishing
tree that Banerji translates is mentioned in the Hathi Gumpha inscription, which
Kharavela brings back along with the Kalinga Jina. On Udayagiri it then marks the site of
the Jinalaya which Kharavela built and on Khandagiri it marks the location where the
supposed Jina currently resides.
Both the hills are covered with and surrounded by a jungle, which in the past served as a
source of firewood for the villagers living nearby. To the Sadhus frequenting the site it
was a source of many medicinal plants, to deal with which the Forest Department set up a
base at Udayagiri and formed vigilance committees .With urbanisation and the city
expanding outwards towards Khandagiri-Udayagiri, much has happened in transforming
the status of this surrounding land. From being jungle and or agricultural land, much of it
has become potential real estate and land prices have in tandem skyrocketed. The jungle
immediately surrounding both hills has been fenced off, with the jungle behind
Khandagiri recently converted and cordoned off into a fairly large park called “Jaidev
Vatika : Spiritual Park”. Mixing ideas of spirituality, good health and fine living, it has
given a further boost to the local real estate pricings. Meanwhile it also adds a whole new
local upper middle class segment of people to the list of regular visitors to the site. The
nature of power operating at the site and its production of a controlled diversity may
become clearer with the following example: the jungle housed several tribes of monkeys
(Hanuman Langurs, Semnopithecus entellus), - with increasing urbanisation their habitat
decreased and so did the amount of food available. At present, several villagers go to
Khandagiri carrying, bananas, peanuts, bread slices, leaves and other edible things in
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baskets which they sell to the tourists to feed to the monkeys, the tourists buy them as
religious duty or merely for the thrill of being able to feed a ‘wild’ animal. The monkeys
would, in a most well behaved manner come and accept this food from the hands of the
visitors. In case a visitor would buy this food and attempt to consume it himself or
herself, a monkey would climb onto them and snatch the food out from their hands and
then go away; sometimes when tourists don’t pay them any attention they would climb
onto their shoulders and refuse to let go until the food was bought. However a monkey
assaulting or biting a tourist is completely unheard of. We must remember that though
these are not pet monkeys but ‘wild’ monkeys, the operation of power onto their habitat
has domesticated them to a large extent. From the point of view of the visitors it is an
excess, it is wilderness at the edge of civilisation; but from the ecological point of view,
from the point of view of the monkeys, it is a strictly ordered space, a controlled,
commodified diversity, where only particular forms of behaviour are acceptable.
To sum up, in this chapter I have looked at the spatial organisation of Khandagiri-
Udayagiri, its multiple parallel configurations as an archaeological, religious and tourist
site, and the s kinds of claims and performances that are embedded in each of these
configurations. I have looked at certain conflicts and oppositions regarding proportional
and inhabitation rights to the site and have tried to argue that this conflict should be seen
– not as some sort of unmanageable excess caused by the presence of various religious
sects on the space of a secularised historical site - but as constitutive of a controlled
diversity, where supposedly opposing, ideologically conflictual institutions constitute a
structure which has a purpose behind its appearance of disorderliness. Behind all the
clashing claims over rights of occupation and worship, there came to exist an implicit
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order of peacable co-existence between the archaeological establishment, the different
religious sects and their institutions, and the new developmental interests of tourism at
the site. As Silberman says: “What is certain, however is that economic considerations
can open the way to an era in which archaeological resources are selectively exploited,
not for scientific or ideological reasons , but according to someone’s idea of what sells”116
116 Neil Asher Silberman, The politics and poetics of Archaeological narrative, Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Kohl and Fawcett (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Great Britain, 1995), Pg 260.
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EPILOGUE
Modern times the Anti-Orthodox religious site:As has already been discussed, Khandagiri-Udayagiri from the Late-Medieval to the
Early Modern period was actively involved in fostering a non-Brahmanical, religious
counter-culture within the domain of popular religiosity in Orissa. Moving away from the
sort of archaeological-institutional history that the first two chapters have perused, this
Epilogue it traces very different processes and activities. The purpose behind this
deviation is to illustrate how the above mentioned non-Brahmanical religious counter-
culture is appropriated within the Brahmanical narratives with the aid of Modern
discourses such as Archaeology, Tourism, Indian Nationalism and regional Nationalism.
Thus while not being a history of the site itself, it is a history of certain ideas and
concepts which were produced at the site, and how they are transformed under the
influence of the various discourses of colonial modernity.
In this Epilogue, I shall look at three sites – three, Ashrams of the order of Arakhit Das
at three different locations - to examine their visual culture and associated practices of
self representation, juxtaposing these with the profile of the kind of visitors it attracts to
see how they project different understandings of religion. The reason why I focus on
Arakhit Das’s sect is because he is one of the more prominent figures in the popular
religious imagination of contemporary Hindu Oriyas who is also centrally associated with
the site of Khandagiri-Udayagiri. Another such figure is Mahima Gosain, who was at
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Khandagiri-Udayagiri for several years. However, since Mahima Gosain travelled a lot,
the site is not so strongly identified with him as it is with Arakhit Das. What is common
to both of them however, is that they evoked rationality to counter those aspects of the
Brahmanic high culture which they thought decadent, while at the same time also
employing the language of Bhakti mystic poetry to propound more inclusive monistic
ideas.
Arakhit Das was a post-Chaitanya mystic, there are three main sites which are associated
with him. The first is Chitrakoot Parvat, where he practiced yoga after leaving his home;
after which he established himself at Khandagiri in Ananta Gumpha, which is considered
his Siddhi pitha, or the site of his enlightenment, after which he travelled to Olasuni
Gumpha near the Buddhist site of Lalitgiri where he finally takes Samadhi and leaves his
physical body to merge with the divine. Arakhit Das was a prolific writer and poet, who
wrote religious-metaphysical manuscripts as well as many songs - in each composition he
mentions the location from where he is writing, and there are only the three above
mentioned sites that he refers to. Apart from all these, there are manuscripts which
contain magical spells and rituals, which are mostly kept secret, passed only from master
to disciple117. There are several legends and myths prevalent about Arakhit Das, most of
them involving miraculous feats. Some of these are mentioned in his own writing, which
mostly follows an auto-biographical style of narration. However there are many myths
which have later accrued onto him, with a noticeable change in content and moral of
these later stories. Arakhit Das was extremely popular because he spectacularly flouted
117 One Sadhu offered to show me a manuscript which according to him contained a formula to make any desired person fall fatally ill. The same manuscript supposedly contained a recipe to cure a person of a fatal illness. There is a popular belief among devotees who visit Arakhit Das’s Ashrams that drinking the rice water kept in these Ashrams will miraculously cure them of all ailments.
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all norms of Brahmanism, he was extremely critical of idol worship, and would accept
alms from untouchables and even eat with them. He employed rationalist arguments to
counter the hierarchical rigidity of casteism and idol worship; such as his famous ‘aamish
tattwa’ or the metaphysics of non-vegetarianism, wherein he argues that the universe is
composed of the five elements which in themselves do not distinguish between what is
vegetarian and non-vegetarian, the fire for example eats wood and flesh alike, living in
this world made of the omnivorous five elements how can any Brahmin maintain his
vegetarian ritual purity? However the popular myths that disseminate knowledge about
him and his views, often appropriate him into the larger Brahmanical fold. For example
there is the story of Mirza, a high ranking Muslim official in the king’s administration,
who upon hearing of Arakhit Das’s fame asks his Hindu servant to invite this sage for a
meal. Arakhit Das accepts, but Mirza in order to humiliate the Hindu ascetic decides to
cook beef and serve it to him. When Arakhit Das sits down to eat, Mirza informs him that
since he is his guest, he will have to eat what is generally eaten in the household, to
which Arakhit Das accedes. The food is laid out but when it is uncovered, much to
Mirza’s dismay it turns out that all the food had been converted into Mahaprasaad , that
is, the vegetarian meal served to the idol of Lord Jagannatha everyday. This story is
particularly revealing, first there is Mirza the rich and powerful Muslim who wants
nothing but to humiliate Hinduism. Arakhit Das now instead of being an internal critic of
Hinduism becomes now its defender against other religions. He not only protects his own
and the purity of his religion by transforming the Beef into Mahaprasaad, but he turns
the table by making Mirza eat Mahaprasaad, thereby Hinduising him. This story and
others similar to it obviously Brahminise the legacy of Arakhit Das. His own logic
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operated along different lines, being a monist, he would have argued that all matter and
all souls are the same substance thus beef was as pure or as polluting as Mahaprasaad. In
fact even in contemporary times it is not uncommon for devotees to offer a bhog of dried
fish to Arakhit Das’s Samadhi at Olasuni gumpha.
Till recently not much was known about Arakhit Das’s background, it was popularly said
that he came from a royal family. Recently the Olasuni Ashram commissioned a historian
to uncover his genealogy. According to that text written by Sri Golok Chandra Pradhan,
Arakhit Das was born in the Barakhemundi royal family in the district of present day
Ganjayam118. He was the second son of Padmanatha Deva who ruled from 1774 to 1805
A.D.; it is estimated that Arakhit Das was born sometime between 1780 and 1788 A.D.,
before renouncing the world his name was Balabhadra Deva, he died in 1833119.
According to the popular belief, he did not have a spiritual master and nor did he make
any disciples while living. He was an Avadhoot and hence attained self-realisation by
himself120. All the Ashrams in his name were started after his death by people who
claimed to have been visited by Arakhit Das posthumously in his spirit form when he
would give them a relic - the wooden sandals in case of the Khandagiri-Udayagiri Paduka
Ashram, and a blanket in case of the Ashram at Chilika. However even within the sect
there are disagreements over this history. Sadhu Damru Das, the Mahant of both
Khandagiri’s Paduka Ashram and the Avadhoot Ashram at Khandagiri Bari, says that
Arakhit Das belonged to a period much earlier than the 18th or 19th century, to the same
118 Golok Chandra Pradhan, Mahapurush Arakhit Das ( Current Edition 2006, Mahant Sri Namananda Das, Olasuni Gumpha)119 The accuracy of this account can be brought into question by the fact that the writer does not share his sources or his analysis but merely pronounces results.120 This a specificity of the Avadhoot sect. All other mystic sects place critical importance on initiation given by a master.
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period as the Panchasakhas and was a part of the during the post-Chaitanya Bhakti
initiative. He quotes passages from Arakhit Das’s Bhakti Teeka and also from
Achyutananda Das to substantiate his claim that Arakhit Das was at least 20 years older
than Achyutananda Das and was in all probability his spiritual master. Indeed in Arakhit
Das’s writings he often depicts himself instructing Achyutanada Das; incredibly
Achyutanada Das121 also mentions Arakhit Das several times, the passage quoted most
often in this regard being ( it’s popularity probably due to the prophetic tone of the
pronunciation) : “there will be a collective of Sadhus at Olasuni hill, where Arakhit the
greatest among Bhaktas will outshine all”122. It should be evident that there is some
amount of mystery surrounding the figure of Arakhit Das and to date him would take an
intense analysis of manuscripts and texts. However, what I find more interesting is the
kind of ideas that he stood for, and how institutions currently operating in his name
acknowledge or suppress his ideology of disregard towards idol-worship and ritual purity.
The Arakhit Das’s sect refers to itself as the Avadhoot sect, which means one who is free
from all worldly bonds. However idol worshipping among them has been going on for
some time. In the introduction to the Oriya translation of Avadhoot Gita, done by a Sri
Ramakrishna Phadi123, written sometime around 1941, we find the writer talking about
specifically this sect. He mentions Avadhoot Sadhus who generally claim to follow
people like Arakhit Das and are found in places like Olasuni. The writer is greatly
displeased by the proliferation of Sadhus who go about giving Mantra Diksha to various
people and then exploiting them. He also claims to be disturbed by the way Sadhus would
121 It should be noted that Achyutananda Das was at least two centuries prior to the assumed date of Arakhit Das.122 As quoted by Golok Chandra Pradhan, Mahapurush Arakhit Das ( Current Edition 2006, Mahant Sri Namananda Das, Olasuni Gumpha)123 Sri Ramakrishna Phadi, Avadhoot Gita, ( Current Edition 1994, Dharmagrantha Store, Cuttack)
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claim to be quoting from Avadhoot Gita, often saying things contrary to themselves or
their compatriots, many others had no knowledge of the text. To clarify such
misunderstandings he takes it upon himself to translate the text, after which he finds that
those Sadhus who claimed to be quoting from it were in fact making things up. In the
introduction which contained an ethnography of these sects he reports that they would
wear the holy thread, a medal with aum or nama written on it, white cloth and chandan
tika. So here it becomes evident that the sect had already moved beyond Arakhit Das’s
call to reject malas tilaks and other external signs. The writer also reports they worship
images of various gods. Thus Arakhit Das’s call for shunning idol worship had also been
filtered out. The writer enlists the castes that are excluded from the sect such as Pano,
Kandara, Kela and Pathan (Muslim). Thus even though limited to a few castes and
Muslims the Avadhoot sect was also practicing social exclusion. He reports that a
substantial number of women belonged to the sect, meaning that at least up till the 1940’s
the sect had Sahajiya tendencies, which is not the case now, women are not given
initiation into the sect anymore. These transformations make more sense in light of the
debate for linguistic identity which takes place in the first half of the 20th century. This
lead to a growth of regional chauvinism centred around Jagannatha as a rallying icon. By
the 1940’s right wing organisations such as R.S.S. and Sangh Parivar also establish a
presence in Orissa124.
I have looked at three sites, Olasuni Gumpha near Lalitgiri, Paduka Aashram at
Udayagiri and Avadhoot Aashram at Khandagiri-Bari. Unfortunately, because of
limitations of time and resources I was unable to Chitrakoot Parbat, the first site
124 Harish S Wankhade, The political context of religious conversions in Orissa, (E.P.W., April 17th 2009)
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associated with him. I hope this lapse shall be compensated for by the varying profiles of
the sites covered.
Olasuni Gumpha Ashram:
Olasuni Gumpha is located on one among three hills near the town of Balichandrapur in
Orissa, of the two other hills, one is the famous Buddhist site of Lalitgiri from where a
considerable hoard of sculptures was recovered as well as monasteries and stupa with a
bone relic encased inside. The other hill contains an un-excavated stupa, and the third, the
Olasuni hill, has on it’s top three underground rock cut caves, probably belonging to the
same period. Of the three one, has an above ground sheltering structure, it is this cave
which is considered to be Aarakhit Das’s Samadhi Sthal . The present day Ashram has
come up between and around these caves. Given the location and the surroundings it is
not too much of a stretch of imagination to say that the caves were probably excavated by
the Buddhist Tantric schools that functioned here. There are several myths associated
with the site. Arakhit Das himself mentions that one day in his dream, he was instructed
to go to Olasuni gumpha and reside there. Upon arriving there he realised that all
creatures on the hill were in terror of the Ulasuni thakurani, a (Buddhist?) goddess idol
that was established in that particular cave. When he meditated upon the problem, he was
told by a divine voice that he must get Krishna’s flute from Vrindavana and play it to
calm down the goddess Olasuni. On doing so the goddess was pacified and she agreed to
vacate her cave for Arakhit Das and herself residing at the base of the hill, now a
beneficial deity instead of a terrible one. This is the story of Arakhit Das’s arrival at
Olasuni, which he himself has narrated. Like most Bhakti poets he writes in Sandhya
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Bhasha or in language loaded with metaphors and multiple meanings. So when he says
‘Krishna’s flute’ or ‘Vrindavan’ he is in all probability not talking about any real Flute or
any physical place. However such language is easily appropriable by the Brahmanical
forces, this particular mis-reading becomes all the more easier given the fact that
Jaggannath(Krishna) is considered the sovereign of Orissa. Another reading would
suggest that in all probability Olasuni was a Buddhist goddess that, despite an absence of
worship was still animated and over the years had acquired a rather foul temper. Arakhit
Das however pacifies the spirit and transfers her to another location at the base of the hill.
However, this story as an origin tale of the site, retains the notion that the site was
initially a Buddhist one, the current Mahant of the Ashram, Sadhu Namananda Das, had
another origin story to narrate. In his story, when Durga defeated the demon Mahisha’s
army, one general, a particularly weak demon called Virabahu, escaped and hid on the
hill. After doing penance for many years he became strong and challenged Devi to do
battle. During the battle Devi came to the hill to rest, and there she tied Virabahu’s right
and left limbs separately with two banyan roots, locally called oulha, and tore him into
two halves. After this the hill became known as Olasuni. This story attemts to relocate the
site to one being authentically Hindu, having a pauranic origin.
The Olasuni is the most powerful Ashram of all Arakhit Das Ashrams. However it is not
a headquarters of sorts because most of the Ashrams operate more or less independently.
According to sources it has been only in the last ten years or so that the Olasuni Ashram
and Udayagiri’s Paduka Ashram have been in collaboration with each other. Most of the
task of getting Arakhit Das’s manuscripts published has been taken up by the Olasuni
Ashram. The major event here is the mela held on the Magh ekadashi, which is attended
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by hundreds of ascetics and thousands of householders. It is mostly at the mela that the
books, pamphlets and C.D.’s are sold. The Ashram has produced at least three video
C.D.’s themed around Arakhita Das, there are many others not directly produced by the
Ashram itself. Of these, one C.D. is particularly revealing in terms of the politics of self-
representation. The visual narrative is that of Arakhit Das’s life, divided into three
phases, first the adolescent, when leaves home and goes to Chitrakoot parvat; then as a
young man at Khandagiri and arrival at Olasuni and then finally his mature phase. The
visuals are set to music and song, the lyrics utilise phrases of Arakhit Das’s own writings
but most of it has been written by Sri Mahendra Kumar Singh, a local retired
schoolteacher and a member of the Olasuni trust board. He himself plays the part of
Arakhit Das as a young man, where as the current Mahant Sadhu Namanand Das plays
the role of the mature Arakhit Das, which is noticeable because it is this phase where
most of Arakhit Das’s miracle working activities are emphasised.
The Ashram itself consists of a central temple shrine of Arakhit Das’s Samadhi,
surrounded by several shrines, three belonging to Jagannatha and one of Hanuman along
with the odd Shiva-ling or two. There are multiple smaller Samadhi shrines of the
previous Mahants of the Ashram, kitchen, living quarters of the Sadhus, rooms for
visitors, taps for drinking water, gardens etc. A new structure is coming which is meant to
house more important guests, some rumors have it that it will be a hall rented out for
marriages etc. The entire Ashram has been covered with marble flooring and landscaped
with various kinds of decorative plants. Almost all of the buildings have been covered
with frescos or reliefs of Krishna, Jagannath and Vishnu. Briefly put the iconography
shows an ascetic mastery over various entities from the Vaishnav pantheon. On the
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facade of the Sadhu’s residences, Arakhit Das is shown seated centrally above images of
Vishnu’s Dasavatara, while the Dasavataras are painted onto the wall, the figure of the
ascetic is given a more tangible, a more real look by sculpting it in three dimensions,
emphasising the ascetic as the real world manifestation of these divine powers. At
another place we can see a brightly painted relief composition of Krishna playing his
flute while sporting with Radha alongside Vishnu with Laxmi surrounded by divine
musicians, underneath which is a painted depiction of Jagannath. The emphasis on
decorative plants is also significant, until 10 years ago, the Ashram had a serious water
problem, it being on top of a rocky hill, there were no wells or ponds. Water had to be
manually carried from the base of the top to serve essential purposes of drinking and
cooking. Now not only are there water taps with cooled drinking water and gardens with
flower beds but also, a walk-in water fountain at the entrance, for devotees to clean
themselves before entering, and to freshen up. Outside the entrance is also a small built
structure bearing the name ‘Ananta Gumpha’, a prominent sign inscribed there claims
that it was here that Baba Baliya received a ‘shooyavani’ that is, received a divine
message. Baba Baliya is a famous television god-man of Orissa, and Ananta Gumpha is a
famous cave from Khandagiri where Arakhit Das received his enlightenment. Creating
another Ananta gumpha at Olasuni and the Mahant casting himself as a miracle
performing Arakhit Das in the video C.D., are not mere eccentricities but rather must be
looked as attempts to appropriate the magico-spiritual potential associated with Arakhit
Das and sites like Khandagiri by certain individuals for partisanal purposes.
The central temple follows an elaborate daily itinerary of rituals. From bathing, feeding,
offering flowers, aarati etc. One of the Sadhus from another Ashram sarcastically
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referred to it as a second Srikhetra, the Jagganath temple at Puri. The irony is that Arakhit
Das had an intense dislike of Jagannatha, on his visit to Puri he had been unable to see
the famed idol and received no food either, after which he cursed Jagannath and called
him impotent, consequently Laxmi herself supposedly came and fed him. The king of
Puri also tried to convince Arakhit Das to stay near Puri, offering him generous land
grants but that too Arakhit Das turned down.
Given its importance, within the popular religious circuits of Orissa, especially among the
rural population, the Ashram has begun to receive attention from various politicians.
Many local villagers claimed, inside and outside the Ashram, that politicians often came
to the Ashram on vacation along with their consorts. Which actually goes a long way to
explain why the Ashram had been landscaped in the same kind of aesthetic as an exotic
resort. This Ashram presents us with an interesting conjunction what Edensor would’ve
called ‘Enclavic tourist site’ and pilgrimage tourism.
Paduka Aashram:The Paduka Ashram, as has already been mentioned in the previous chapter is located at
the base of Udayagiri hill, outside Bhubaneswar. Its present form as a brick and cement
structure was given to it be the previous Mahant Sadhu Udhav Das, who held the
stewardship from 1962 to 2007; although the foundations are said to have already been
laid by his predecessor, Sadhu Shankar Das. The Ashram was founded by Sadhu
Banamali Das, who took Arakhit Das’s wooden sandals and some manuscripts and
established them first in Khandagiri’s Ananta Gumpha, from where they were moved to
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the base of Khandagiri hill and from there again to the current location at the base of
Udayagiri hill. Initially it was only a mud structure that housed the relics and a sacrificial
fire. From around the beginning of the 60’s various associated shrines were added to it, at
present the Ashram has a Kali shrine, a Shiva shrine and one Annapurna shrine, apart
from a Jagannath housed along with the manuscripts. This Ashram has a fairly limited
litany of daily rituals; incense and flowers are offered in the morning to all the shrines
and once in the evening. The sacrificial fire is lit every evening before dusk which is
immediately followed by an aarti of the manuscripts and the Jagannath image. In a
chamber adjacent to the one housing the manuscripts are kept Arakhit Das’s wooden
sandals, to which everyday flowers and devotion is offered. In front of both these
chambers a large bell is suspended. Visitors come to the Ashram, ring the bell and offer
salutations to the same manner as they would to an idol in a temple. Exactly opposite to
this is the Mahant’s seat behind which is the havankund and a seated sculpture of Arakhit
Das125. Visitors bow either to the image or the Sadhu and are told to smear holy ash onto
their foreheads, some choose to carry a small amount of ash back with them wrapped in
newspaper pieces. The vessel containing the ash is placed on a donation box, where every
visitor deposits a little money. The Ashram had gained considerable notoriety in recent
times under the previous Mahant’s administration when sadhus there would advocate
consumption of meat and intoxicants claiming that the Avadhoot must not differentiate
between what common people consider ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as a result of which the Ashram
had become quite a popular hangout for local alcoholics and degenerates. The current
Mahant has however made considerable efforts to clean up the Ashram and its image, at
125 The sculpture is recent and is not based on any actual visual representation of Arakhit Das, of which there aren’t any.
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least to the extent that unlike previously these activities are now no more carried out in
the open.
This Ashram houses many vibrant wall-to-wall frescos, till recently most of these had
been done by an amateur artist, a devotee at the Ashram, and represented a wide variety
of themes from the Hindu pantheon. However the new Mahant has had them repainted,
but this time by a traditional Orissan Patachitrakaar. The central depicted theme is
Krishna-lila, or events from the life of Krishna, there are large sized depictions of
Laxmi-Narayan, the Jagannath trinity and Ganesh, apart from which the artist has
repainted the smaller groups that previously existed such as Vishnu’s Dasavatara or the
Dasamahavidya or the Navagraha.
Some of the murals from the previous scheme have been left untouched, all of which are
not in the central space, of those remaining are some depictions from the Ramayana and
an image of Aardhanarishwara. One of the tasks that the previous scheme of frescos did
was to create a sort of pan-pauranic display of Hindu deities, so that Hindu visitors from
any part of the country would be able to identify at least some deities that they venerate.
The current display tries to preserve that aspect but also much more strongly asserts a
traditional Vaishnav-Oriya identity in the Jagannath tradition. Here we can again think of
Edensor’s views on how tourism is the search for cultural difference. Thus the images re-
assert a high-Brahmanic identity, whereas objects such as the manuscripts associated with
an aniconic tradition, begin to be treated as relics and are places in such architectural
settings that they too, are drained of their meaning and begin to function in the same way
as idols.
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Avadhoot Ashram:The Avadhoot Ashram is located at Khandagiri-Bari, roughly only a kilometre away from
the Khandagiri-Udayagiri hills, it is a very recent Ashram, and currently is under
construction. The current Mahant is Sadhu Damru Das, who was asked to be the Mahant
of the Udayagiri Aashram after the death of its Mahant in 2007, currently he manages
both the Ashrams. In all probability it came into being, after the 60’s once the A.S.I.
began to evict Sadhus from the caves in Udyagiri. Unlike the other two Ashrams
discussed, this Ashram hardly attracts any visitors, only a select number of locals visit
and are involved in its affairs. The central object of veneration here is not any relic but an
icon of Radha-Krishna. However, the icon itself is placed in a room with extensive
illustrations and text. The imagery derives itself from medieval manuscript illustrations of
tantric traditions. The icon in these images is de-anthropomorphised, in the sense that it is
no more displayed as a person, but rather as a map of the ethereal-physical body. The
icon itself then functions no more as an image or a representation but rather becomes a
code. The wall illustrations show the various chakras and the various mantras and their
location in the body. It maps out details of the mystic notion of the body as the universe,
of the body as the knower, and that which should be known.
However, it would be rather naive to simply think that these illustrations are the hidden
doctrine revealed. What these images do is they reveal the details of the mystical
knowledge of the body without actually ever revealing the key to comprehending this
knowledge or the ways of practicing it. Which are, of course only obtainable by
dedication to a master. However what these images actually do is to point out to the fact
that there is in fact, a secret. This is something that the visual culture of the other two
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Ashrams does not do, in other places the imagery precisely tries to hide the fact that there
is actually a secret doctrine126. Such a claim of authenticity of tradition is in part
necessitated by the fact that this Ashram does not possess any relics nor is it of much
prominence in the pilgrimage circuits. On the other hand it is only because of its
marginality that it becomes possible to display the secret doctrine in this manner. Which
is to say that, working within its role as a peripheral site it utilises this imagery to make a
claim of authenticity for itself.
In this Epilogue I have looked at practices of self-representation and spatial arrangement
among religious sites of a particular sect that grew out of an anti-orthodox wave of
religious practitioners focussed in and around Khandagiri-Udayagiri in the late 18th and
early 19th century. My task was to look at how these practices of self-representation allow
for the co-opting of the anti-orthodox discourse into the Brahmanical orthodoxy.
To sum up, this work has been concerned with the relationship between the secular
practices of administration, knowledge production, tourism and the practice of religion at
monumental sites. For my purposes I chose to look at the Khandagiri-Udayagiri cave
complex in Bhubaneswar Orissa, which houses orthodox, heterodox and ascetic sects,
apart from being an important touristic and archaeological site. In the first chapter I
examined the existing archaeological and historical scholarship on the site, situating this
within larger process of governmental custody and control over the site; as well as within
the dominant framework of knowledge that determined the antiquity and Jain
nomenclature of Udayagiri-Khandagiri. Finally I attempt to construct an alternate
historical narrative that de-stabilizes the standard historical narratives of the site. In the
126 Urban, Hugh, The Economics of ecstacy: Tantra secrecy and power in Colonial Bengal, ( Oxford University Press, New York, 2001)
92
second chapter, I attempted to integrate the contending archaeological and religious lives
of the site as they unfolded in the modern period; I looked at certain contestations over
proprietorship and use of the caves and sculptures between various sects as well as the
A.S.I. Then, I go on to discuss Khandagiri-Udayagiri as a tourist site, locating the site
within various imagined geographies and the construction of tourist space and tourist
performances. In this epilogue, I have gone beyond Khandagiri-Udayagiri to discuss
three religious institutions which are linked to an aniconic movement which evolved from
Khandagiri-Udayagiri in the late medieval period. Looking at the profile of their visitors,
the visual cultural spaces of these Ashrams and the kinds of rituals performed in these, I
have looked at the way some of the specificities of tensions between iconism and
aniconism play themselves out in these religious institutions.
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