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

5

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

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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.

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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)

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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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