It was the second day of the three day Raja festival. The festival is observed by agrarian people of Odisha at the onset of monsoon. They refrain from work and give rest to Mother Earth. Children clad in new dress eat cakes specially prepared for the occasion, play and do merrymaking. As decided earlier, we started our journey to visit Buddhist sites of Ratnagiri, Udaygiri and Lalitgiri, called the Buddhist Diamond Triangle.
Monsoon had set in and there was intermittent rain. When we took a diversion from Daitary-Paradeep national highway at Krushnadaspur towards Ratnagiri, the rain had stopped. On the one side of the road from Krushnadashpur to Ratnagiri there were green sugarcane fields and on the other side, there were hills and here and there, date and palm trees. Boys and girls were playing in swings hung from the branches of mango or banyan trees near the road side villages. Used to city life, we felt like entering into a different world.
We reached Ratnagiri at around 11 AM.
Bishnu Charan Mohanty, a social worker and an active member of Puspagiri Parisad, an organisation dedicated for development of the Buddhist sites was waiting for us.
Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese traveller visited India to study Mahayan Buddhism. Since he was not permitted to travel to India, he secretly came and reached Gandhara in 630 AD. He passed through Odisha and visited Buddhist sites during 638-641AD. He had mentioned in his accounts a famous monastery pu-sie-po-ki-li or Puspagiri which has not yet been identified satisfactorily by the historians. He has also mentioned existence of a stupa north to Puspagiri, which is identified as Ratnagiri. Hiuensa Tsang’s accounts testify that Odisha’s Buddhists were of Mahayan sect.
Odisha’s relation with Buddhism was from the early times, from days of Buddha himself. Two merchants of Utkal, Tapassu and Bhallika while passing through the middle country met Buddha and offered him rice cakes and honey. They became his disciples. Ashoka, emperor of Magadha had won Kalinga war fought in 261 BC, but after his victory he shunned violence forever, embraced Buddhism and propagated message of peace. The elephant figure, hewn in those times at Dhauli was the symbol of the birth of Buddha and was, perhaps, intended to remind the people of Kalinga of the Buddha and his teachings. Taranath, the historian speaks of the Ratnagiri monastery which was built on the top of a hill, where three copies each of Mahayan and Hinayan Buddhism and other scriptures were kept.
Bishnu Babu acted as our guide. The Buddhist relics of Ratnagiri were first brought to notice of the scholars in 1905 by Manmohan Chakravarti, then Sub Divisional Officer of Jajpur district. Excavation was conducted under the direction of Debala Mitra during the year 1958-61. Excavations revealed a massive stupa, two monasteries, shrines, and numerous votive stupas, a large number of terracotta and stone sculptures, and Buddhist antiquities including bronze, copper and brass objects. The centre of attraction here is a massive seated Buddha in bhumisparsa-mudra flanked by the standing figures of Padmapani and Vajrapani holding chamaras on each side, in the central sanctum. The finest relic of Buddhist art is the gate of Ratnagiri monastery.
An aesthetically planned three terraced building houses an archaeological museum which was completed in 1990, and started functioning in August 15, 1998. The museum consists of four galleries displayed with various antiquities mainly related to tantric Buddhism including small votive stupas, sculptures of different medium and dimensions in stone, bronze, ivory, copper and stone inscriptions and terracotta seals.
Udayagiri, also known as “Sunrise Hill,” is only nine km away from Ratnagiri. This Buddhist site is enriched with a brick stupa, two brick monasteries, a stepped stone deep well which never goes dry even in hot summer. The deep well was constructed during those days when use of rope for lifting buckets of water was not known.
The stupa at Udayagiri has four seated stone statues of Buddha, enshrined and facing each direction. There is an extensive monastic complex with 13 cells and a towering statue of Budhhha seated in bhumisparsa mudra. Besides, sculptures of Buddha and other Buddhist divinities like Tara, Majusri, Hariti, Chunda, Vasudhara,etc have been discovered in large numbers at the site.
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Lalitagiri is about 10 km far from Udayagiri. Excavations have unearthed an apsidal chaitya hall or chaityagriha, four monasteries and stone sculptures of Buddha and Buddhist divinities. Worth mentioning discovery in Lalitgiri were three relic caskets, two containing small pieces of charred bones inside the stupa. Buddhist literature says that after the death of Buddha, his corporal remains were distributed among his disciples to be placed within the stupas. The remains preserved in the caskets are believed to have belonged to the Buddha himself.
At one time Buddhism was the dominant religion in entire Odisha. Later, Buddhism started disappearing as it lost royal patronage in and around 700 AD. Its survival also became difficult. With the revival of orthodox Brahminical religion, Buddhists were harassed and even murdered. In course of time Buddhism was also assimilated in Hinduism and lost its identity. Buddha was deified and accepted as one of the avatar or incarnation of Bishnu in Hinduism. Buddhism disappeared from the land of its birth.
Ratnagiri and Udayagiri sites have Mahakala temples which were later developments with the revival of Brahminical orthodoxy. It was already two in the afternoon when we reached Udayagiri. Blood stains in front of Mahakala temple at Udayagiri astounded us. There were intermittent rains from the early morning. The downpour had not washed away completely the blood stains. Dr Bhagyadhar Sahoo, retired head master and a scholar of the locality told that goats had been sacrificed before Mahakala on the occasion of rajasankranti. Later, we learnt from newspapers that more than fifty goats had been sacrificed the next day before the Mahakala at Udayagiri.
Buddhism was born in reaction against violence in Brahminical religion, especially against animal sacrifice. Buddhism preaches peace and non-violence. Animal sacrifice is a punishable offence under the law. Still, violence and sacrifice do not stop. Insides the sites of Buddhism which was founded on the principles of non-violence, people do not have any scruple to sacrifice animals and cause bloodshed.
Hiuen Tsang in his accounts describes the people of Odradesa that includes present district of Jajpur were of violent ways, and were different from the mid country. One thousand and five hundred years after the visit of Hiuen Tsang and despite progress of civilisation, sacrifice in the Buddhist precincts testifies to the fact that the violence in the man has not died out.
( With inputs and photographs from Sefali Suman)
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