Place · Buddhist rock-cut caves · India
Dhamnar caves
Some fifty rock-cut Buddhist excavations in the laterite of Mandsaur district, with a large reclining Buddha and a stupa cut from the living rock, and beside them the monolithic Dharmarajeshwara temple carved out of the same face several centuries later. Two religions quarrying one cliff.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.200, 75.500
Worth knowing
The Dharmarajeshwara is cut downward out of the rock in the manner of Ellora's Kailasa but at a quarter of the scale, and it stands in a pit of its own making. The site is one of the least visited major rock-cut complexes in India and was surveyed properly only in the twentieth century.
Connections (2)
- Shared site withEllorā
Dhamnār and Ellora both cut Buddhist and Hindu excavations into one rock face, and both end with a monolithic Hindu temple carved downward out of the hill. Ellora's Kailāsa is the enormous version; Dhamnār's Dharmanātha is the same idea at a scale one village could pay for. Kailāsa removed about two hundred thousand tonnes of rock and was cut from the top down over several generations, with no possibility of correcting a mistake once made.
- AnalogueEllorā
Ellora's thirty-four excavations and Dhamnar's fifty are the two places where Buddhist, Hindu and in one case Jain rock-cutting share a single cliff across several centuries. The technique is identical because the masons' tradition was continuous; what changed was who was paying. Rock-cut architecture is the clearest evidence that these traditions used the same workforce.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dhamnar”. Archaeological Survey of India, Bhopal circle monument records; UNESCO tentative-list submission for the rock-cut sites of Dhamnar.
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