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The Ratnagiri Mahavihara or monastery complex is spread over 18 acres of land atop a hillock much like other Buddhist sites like Udaigiri, Lalitgili nearby or like Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh. First excavated between 1958 and 1961 by Debala Mitra, India’s first and only woman director general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Mitra brought Ratnagiri out of centuries of obscurity and the three years of excavations threw up enough evidence of it having been a Buddhist site since at least the 6th or 7th century.

The latest excavation at the site began last year and was the first time since Ratnagiri’s hidden historical jewels were sought to be unearthen since Mitra’s excavations more than six decades ago. Even in its ruins the site appears majestic. One massive stupa forms the centre, surrounded by two monasteries, at least one smaller stupa, and hundreds of votive stupas scattered all around. The presence of votive stupas clearly shows that site was held in deep reverence by Buddhists who patronised the complex liberally. Writing in her memoirs, Debala Mitra recorded, “No information on this establishment is forthcoming from other parts of India as well. Indeed, Ratnagiri was all but forgotten, either in records or in tradition, in India itself. Curiously enough, a faint memory of the establishment lingered in a few late Tibetan records. The veracity of these works, which is often questioned, is, however, sufficiently borne out by the finds in excavations”.

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The Tibetan records Mitra refers to is largely the early 17th century book, History of Buddhism in India, by the Tibetan monk Taranath who records that Ratnagiri was established by king Buddhapaksha (identified by some scholars as the 6th century Gupta king Narasinghgupta Baladitya), and was a centre of both Mahayana and Hinayana schools. Buddhapaksha is said to be another name given to him for his patronage of Buddhism.

Mitra writes, “The Tibetan texts also hint at the contribution of the centre towards Kalachakrayana, an offshoot of the Vajrayana form of Buddhism. Special esteem appears to have been attached to this seat of learning”.

According to Taranath, “near the coast of the ocean, on the top of a hill in the country of Odivisa (Odish) a in the east, king Buddhapaksha, in the end of his life, built a temple called Ratnagiri. He prepared three copies of each of the scriptural works of the Mahayana and Hinayana and kept these in this temple, he established there eight great centres for the doctrine and maintained (or collected) five hundred monks”.

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Gupta period is attested to by paleographic evidence at Ratnagiri, after the fall of this dynasty in the 7th century, Bhauma-karas (8th-10th CE), a local dynasty took over patronage of the Buddhist site and enabled it to flourish through greater building and sculptural activity oriented in Tantra school of Buddhism. That also explains the Tibetan Taranath’s keen interest in Ratnagiri.

According to Debala Mitra, “Behind this unprecedented growth of art and architecture, presumably, worked the active patronage of the kings of the Bhauma-Kara dynasty, which ultimately ousted the Sailodbhavas and ruled the major part of Orissa for slightly over two centuries. The first three rulers of this dynasty … were Buddhists”.

China Connection

In 795 CE, one of these kings, Subhakaradeva I, presented through Prajna, a monk from Kapisa, an autographed copy of a Buddhist manuscript to Ts-tsong, the Chinese emperor.

Although in Ratnagiri no inscriptional evidence linking Bhaumakaras to site has been found so far, there are several other sites where their inscriptions have been found which clearly show them as patrons of Buddhism. Jajpur, their capital and present district headquarter lies only 21 kms from Ratnagiri.

Besides inscriptions that reveal the Vajrayana leanings of the site, many statues of Buddhist deities such as Tara, Hariti and Panchika, several statues of Buddha, and Vajrapani have also been found. One of the most remarkable pieces is the doorway made of green stone, contains several guardian deities along with the figure of a boy mooning himself to the viewer.

Ratnagiri appears to have gradually started losing patronage since the 13th century in the wake of the fall of the Bhaumakara dynasty as well as the turbulent political situation that prevailed in the region.

After the Bhaumakaras two other dynasties continued to patronise the site i.e the Somavamsis, and the Gangas, this is borne out by a Somavamsi inscription and evidence of continued building activist found at Ratnagiri.

However, after the Gangas were defeated by the Gajapati dynasty in the 15th century there seems to have been no effort to revive the Buddhist faith which had suffered serious reverses by both Muslims conquerors and Hindu rivals. Mitra wrote, “Gajapati king Prataparudradeva (1497-1540 CE) appears to have been hostile to Buddhism. The reign of prataparudradeva is marked by the reoriented Vaishnavism under the lead of Sri Chaitanyadeva (1486-1522) who not only had a profound influence on the king but left an indelible mark in the country which henceforward, became warm upholder of the teachings of this great Vaishnava saint.”

HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal