Place · archaeological city · India
Sirpur
The early-medieval urban and religious centre at Sirpur in Mahasamund district, Chhattisgarh, 85 kilometres from Raipur — the capital of the Panduvamshi (Sarabhapuriya and later Soma Vamsha) dynasty of South Kosala in the 6-10th centuries CE. The 6-century Lakshmana temple (brick Nagara-style, one of the oldest surviving brick temples in India), the 7-century Surang Tila Shiva temple complex, the Buddhist Ananda Prabha Vihara, and the Jain Rishabhadeva temple together document the Buddhist, Shaiva and Vaishnava religious coexistence at the Panduvamshi capital. Xuanzang visited Sirpur in 639 CE and described it as the capital of the kingdom of 'Kosala' with 100 Buddhist monasteries and 10,000 monks. The site was abandoned after the 10-century Soma Vamsha shift to Suvarnapura (Sambalpur). ASI excavations since 1890 and Chhattisgarh state excavations from 2000 are ongoing.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Tradition
- Central Indian and Bastar traditions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 21.335, 82.190
Connections (3)
- Successor capital ofRatanpur
Sirpur was the Panduvamshi capital of Dakshina Kosala in the sixth and seventh centuries and Ratanpur the Kalachuri capital from the eleventh, seventy kilometres apart on the same Mahanadi plain. The shift of political centre is also a religious one: Sirpur has Buddhist viharas beside its Shaiva and Vaishnava temples, and Ratanpur has a goddess temple and no Buddhism at all.
- TransmissionGandhāra
Xuanzang describes a kingdom of Kosala with a hundred monasteries and ten thousand monks, generally identified with Sirpur, and the excavated viharas there include Mahayana bronzes of quality. Central India's Buddhism is usually skipped between Sanchi and the Pala viharas, and Sirpur is the site that fills that gap on the Mahanadi rather than the Ganges.
- Architectural modelSatmahal, Kalcha
Brick temples in Surguja belong to the same constructional family as the Lakshmana temple at Sirpur in the Mahanadi valley: fired brick with terracotta ornament, a tradition of the eastern plains rather than of the stone-cutting south.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sirpur”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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