Mulagandha Kuti Vihara is located 400m east of the main entrance to the ancient Buddhist complex at Sarnath. Completed and opened in November 1931, this temple is considered the crowning achievement of Anagarika Dharmapala, who founded the Maha Bodhi Society in 1891 with the aim of resurrecting the […]
Located 600m south of the main Sarnath Buddhist Complex, Chaukhandi Stupa is a lofty brick built structure curiously crowned with an octagonal tower. The name Chaukhandi comes from the four-armed plan of the stupa, which was declared to be of national importance by the Archaeological Survey of India […]
Historical Context Sarnath is one of the four most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the world, the other three being Lumbani (where Buddha was born), Bodhgaya (where Buddha attained enlightenment), and Kusinagar (where Buddha died). Siddhartha Gautama was born to a royal family of the Shakya dynasty sometime […]
The Archaeological Museum at Sarnath is the ASI’s oldest site museum, and is one of the most important in India. Plans to build a museum to house, study and display the antiquities found at Sarnath was initiated in 1905 by Sir John Marshall, the then Director General of […]
Bhubaneswar has a unique position among the cities of India. A temple town with a series of ancient sandstone temples and tanks, its wealth of monuments is testament to an ancient continuous architectural and historical heritage covering well over 2,000 years from the 3rd century B.C. Bhubaneswar is understandably […]
Located 15 km north of Puri in Odisha, Raghurajpur is a heritage crafts village, the first to be established in the State in the year 2000. The village is best known for its master Pattachitra painters, who apply intricate cloth-based scroll paintings of mythological narratives and folktales. This […]
The towering late 11th century Lingaraja (Lingaraj) Temple is, in religious terms, the most important in Bhubaneswar. It is also the climax of all the monuments in the city, being both the largest and most stylistically evolved. The large walled compound lies just 100m south of Bindu Sagar […]
Manikarnikesvara Temple is located almost opposite Ananta Vasudeva Temple on the east bank of Bindu Sagar Tank in old Bhubaneswar. I have to confess that I may have the name of this temple wrong, I have struggled to find any references to it and it is not marked […]
Kevin Standage 
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