Place · monastic complex
Udayagiri (Odisha)
The largest excavated Buddhist complex in Odisha, with two monasteries, a stepped stupa, rock-cut Buddha figures and a stone well whose inscription gives the site's own name — Madhavapura Mahavihara — which is a rare case of a monastery identified from its own record.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.645, 86.270
Worth knowing
Ratnagiri, Lalitagiri and Udayagiri stand within about ten kilometres of each other and are called the diamond triangle. Together they show Odishan Buddhism running for a thousand years and surviving the destruction of the Gangetic monasteries by a century or more.
Connections (2)
- Succession in timeJagannātha Temple, Puri
The Odishan monasteries were still functioning when the Eastern Gangas began the Jagannatha temple at Puri a hundred kilometres away in the twelfth century, and the absorption is visible on the ground: Jagannatha, Balabhadra and Subhadra as a triad of wooden images, the exclusion of image-making from stone, and the Buddhist reading of the triad as the three jewels have all been argued for centuries. What is certain is that one tradition's patronage moved to the other inside a few generations.
- Site adjacencyLalitgiri
Lalitgiri and Udayagiri (Odisha) are two of the three Diamond Triangle monastic complexes of Odisha Buddhism, with Ratnagiri. Udayagiri is the largest of the three in excavated area; Lalitgiri is the oldest and the site of the stupa with authenticated Buddha corporeal relics. The three were operated as a single teaching network under the Bhaumakara and later Somavamsha patronage. Their decline in the 13th century coincides with the Jagannath cult's rise at Puri, which absorbed Buddhist iconography into the triad of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Udayagiri, Odisha”. Xuanzang and Yijing’s accounts; Archaeological Survey of India excavation reports.
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