Place · Jain rock-cut caves · India
Udayagiri & Khandagiri caves
Also known as Hathigumpha, Hathigumpha, Udayagiri
The twin hills near Bhubaneswar, Odisha, with 33 Jain monastic caves cut in the 1st century BCE and the Hathigumpha inscription of King Kharavela of Kalinga, carved in 150 BCE. The Hathigumpha text — 17 lines in Prakrit Brahmi — is the longest Kalinga inscription known and the chief source for the Mahameghavahana dynasty. It records Kharavela's campaigns, his restoration of a Kalingan Jina image taken by Nanda emperor Mahapadma to Magadha, and his patronage of Jain ascetics. The caves across the hill from the Buddhist Dhauli edict of Ashoka show the two religious currents organising Odisha monastic geography side by side across generations.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Tradition
- Hathigumpha inscription; Jain monastic tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.262, 85.783
Worth knowing
The Hāthīgumphā inscription of Khāravela, cut into one of these caves, is the chief source for the history of ancient Kalinga.
Connections (3)
- Imperial inscription atChampāpurī
Khāravela's Hāthīgumphā inscription is cut in the Jain caves at Udayagiri near Bhubaneswar and is the fullest royal record of Jain patronage from the early historic period — a king listing his campaigns, his public works and the Jain image he recovered from Magadha, in one long Prakrit text. Khāravela also claims in the same text to have brought back a Jina image that a Nanda king had carried off from Kalinga three centuries earlier, which is the earliest recorded Indian repatriation.
- Contemporary capital withSisupalgarh
Kharavela's Hathigumpha inscription at Udayagiri records his repair of a city's gates and embankments, which is usually taken to mean Sisupalgarh, and claims campaigns reaching Magadha in answer to the Mauryan conquest. A Jain king's rock-cut caves and an excavated fortified city, three kilometres apart, are the two halves of post-Ashokan Kalinga.
- Site withinBhubaneswar
Udayagiri & Khandagiri caves lies within Bhubaneswar — the two sites sit about 6 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Udayagiri & Khandagiri caves is one of the specific sites that give Bhubaneswar its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves — ASI
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