Place · Buddhist mahavihara · India
Pushpagiri
The Buddhist monastic complex at Pushpagiri in Jajpur district, Odisha, excavated by the Odisha State Museum team from 1996 — identified as one of the three great Buddhist mahaviharas of ancient Odisha (with Ratnagiri and Udayagiri), named by Xuanzang in his 639 CE visit to Kalinga as the Puspagiri monastery with over 100 monks. The complex covers about 20 hectares across the hills of Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri. Excavations have uncovered a chaityagriha, three major stupas, a double-storey vihara, and over 200 bronze and stone Buddhist images spanning the 4th-12th centuries. The Pushpagiri site provides the clearest documentation of the Pala-period Mahayana-Vajrayana transition in eastern India; it operated continuously for 800 years before Bakhtiyar Khilji's early 13th-century raids.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.120, 85.790
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyJajpur
Jajpur district holds both the Buddhist hills of Ratnagiri, Lalitagiri and Udayagiri and the Shakta seat of Biraja, within thirty kilometres. The monasteries were still producing Vajrayana bronzes and Kalachakra material into the twelfth century while the Kesari dynasty was building goddess temples; the two traditions overlapped for centuries rather than succeeding each other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Pushpagiri”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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