Place · rock-cut Ganesha temple · India
Girijatmaj, Junnar
Also known as Girijatmaj, Girijatmaj (Ganesha in cave 7), Girijatmaj — Lenyadri, Junnar, Junnar, Pune, Lenyadri, Pune
The Girijatmaj Ganesha temple at Lenyadri in Pune district, Maharashtra, 97 kilometres from Pune — the only Ashtavinayak temple located in a Buddhist rock-cut cave, specifically Cave 8 of the 2nd-century BCE Lenyadri Buddhist cave group. The Buddhist chaityagriha (prayer hall) was converted to a Ganesha temple around the 11-century; the Ganesha deity was carved from the cave's rock face. The temple sits at a height, reached by a 283-step climb. The deity Girijatmaj ('mountain-born son of Parvati') is unique as a Ganesha figure carved into the Buddhist cave's natural rock. The adjacent 29 Buddhist caves (dating to the 1st century BCE Satavahana period) preserve the chaityagriha and viharas. The temple is managed by the Girijatmaj Devasthan Trust. The annual Ganesha Chaturthi festival each August-September draws over 200,000 pilgrims.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 19.242, 73.898
Connections (3)
- Shared site withDaulatabad
Leṇyādri is a Buddhist cave group of about thirty excavations from the first centuries CE, cut in the same Junnar hills and the same decades as Bhājā, Bedsā and Kārlā. One of its cells was later given to Gaṇeśa, which is how an Aṣṭavināyaka shrine came to be a chaityagriha with a pillarless hall.
- Shared site withJunnar cave groups
Cave eight of the Leṇyādri group at Junnar, cut as a Buddhist hall in the first centuries CE, is now Girijātmaj, one of the eight Aṣṭavināyaka shrines. A pillarless chaitya became a Gaṇeśa temple, and the circuit's only cave shrine is a Buddhist building reused. The hall has no supporting pillar because it was cut from the living rock rather than built, which is why an eighteenth-century Gaṇeśa shrine has a first-century Buddhist interior.
- Site adjacencyVighnahar, Junnar
Vighnahar and Girijatmaj are two of the Ashtavinayak Ganesha shrines around Junnar in the Pune hills; they are separate temple sites a short drive apart on the pilgrim circuit, not one inside the other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Lenyadri”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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