Time, Power, and the Ruins: How Buddhist Odisha Was Remembered, Reframed, and Reclaimed

Buddhist sites do not disappear when monks leave. They enter a different historical condition—one shaped by memory, neglect, reuse, reinterpretation, and, eventually, heritage governance. In Odisha, the Buddhist landscape did not vanish with the decline of monastic institutions. Instead, it passed through multiple regimes of meaning: sacred ruin, forgotten mound, quarry, pilgrimage marker, archaeological site, tourist destination, and now a candidate for global heritage recognition.

Time and political power have continuously reshaped the meaning of Buddhist Odisha, and yet ruins survive not as neutral remnants but as active participants in historical narration.

Late Buddhist Transition and the Reordering of Patronage

Archaeological evidence from sites such as Ratnagiri and Udayagiri suggests that Buddhist institutional life in Odisha underwent gradual reorientation rather than abrupt collapse between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE. Structural additions become fewer, sculptural programs become more selective, and iconography increasingly reflects specialised Vajrayana ritual forms. These changes coincide with broader political shifts in eastern India, where regional dynasties redistributed patronage across Shaiva, Shakta, and Vaishnava institutions.

Historian B.D. Chattopadhyaya has emphasised that early medieval religious change often involved “realignment of resources rather than replacement of belief systems.” Odisha’s Buddhist record supports this view. Buddhist monasteries continued to function as ritual and symbolic centres even as their scale contracted. The attenuation of monastic life, therefore, reflects changing political economies rather than doctrinal extinction.

Ruins as Living Landscapes in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

One of the least documented phases in the history of Buddhist Odisha lies between the end of institutional monastic life and the beginning of colonial archaeology. During this long interval, Buddhist ruins entered local cultural ecosystems in ways rarely recorded in texts. Oral traditions, place-names, and ritual practices indicate that many sites retained sacred or semi-sacred status.

At Lalitgiri and Ratnagiri, local communities reused dressed stone blocks for domestic and agricultural purposes, a practice archaeologists identify through displaced architectural fragments embedded in village structures. Rather than viewing this as vandalism, anthropologists interpret it as evidence of continuity through reuse. Ruins became quarries of meaning and material, integrated into everyday life.

Several Buddhist sites were also absorbed into Shaiva and folk ritual geographies. Sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas were sometimes reinterpreted as local deities, a process that blurred religious boundaries while preserving visual forms. This period represents a vernacular phase of preservation, where sites survived through adaptation rather than protection.

Colonial Archaeology and the Invention of “Buddhist Odisha”

The entry of Buddhist Odisha into modern historical consciousness begins with colonial archaeology. Early British surveys noted mounds and scattered sculptures, but often misidentified them as Jain or Brahmanical remains. Systematic classification emerged only in the twentieth century, culminating in major excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The work of Debala Mitra marks a turning point. Her excavations at Ratnagiri between 1958 and 1961 revealed extensive monastic complexes, hundreds of sculptures, and a clear stratigraphic sequence. Reflecting on these discoveries, Mitra observed that Odisha had been “entirely absent from standard maps of Buddhist India,” a gap her work decisively addressed. Her identification of Odisha’s first apsidal chaityagriha at Lalitgiri further challenged assumptions about the region’s marginality.

Colonial and early postcolonial archaeology thus transformed scattered ruins into a coherent historical narrative, producing “Buddhist Odisha” as an academic category.

Post-Independence Heritage and the Politics of Protection

After Independence, Buddhist sites in Odisha entered a new regime of meaning governed by legislation, state policy, and institutional conservation. ASI protection status brought legal recognition but also imposed rigid boundaries between “site” and “community.” At Udayagiri, declared a protected monument in 1937, excavation phases in the late twentieth century uncovered monastic layouts while simultaneously restricting local access to traditional ritual spaces.

This transition produced tensions. Local communities accustomed to interacting freely with ruins encountered fences, signboards, and surveillance. Heritage became something administered rather than lived. Anthropologist Laurajane Smith’s concept of the “authorised heritage discourse” helps explain this shift: expert-led narratives began to dominate over local memory, redefining value in archaeological and touristic terms.

What Happens Post-Excavation?

A rarely discussed aspect of Buddhist Odisha involves what happens after excavation. Thousands of artefacts—sculptures, seals, architectural fragments—entered ASI storerooms, museums, and temporary depots. At Ratnagiri, over a thousand clay seals bearing monastic inscriptions were recovered, yet only a fraction remain on public display. The rest exist in archival limbo, known primarily through excavation reports.

These objects shape scholarship while remaining largely invisible to the public. Their selective display influences how Buddhist Odisha is perceived: monumental sculptures receive attention, while administrative debris and everyday objects remain marginal. The politics of curation thus becomes an extension of the politics of excavation.

Tourism, Spectacle, and the Rebranding of Ruins

From the late twentieth century onward, Buddhist sites in Odisha became part of state-led tourism initiatives. Guidebooks, festivals, and signage reframed monasteries as destinations. While this visibility generated awareness, it also simplified complex histories into consumable narratives.

Events such as Buddha Purnima celebrations at Udayagiri illustrate this shift. Ritual performances, cultural programs, and official speeches overlay ancient ruins with contemporary meanings. A Brazilian participant at an international Buddhist meet at Udayagiri remarked that the Diamond Triangle was “unknown to the world despite its scale,” highlighting the paradox of spectacular invisibility that tourism attempts to address.

UNESCO and the Globalisation of Memory

The inclusion of the Diamond Triangle on UNESCO’s Tentative List introduces a new temporal horizon. Heritage is now evaluated through concepts such as Outstanding Universal Value, integrity, and authenticity.

These criteria privilege certain narratives—architectural coherence, seriality, transregional significance—while sidelining others, such as local reuse or vernacular memory.

UNESCO recognition does not merely protect sites; it reframes them within global hierarchies of value. The Diamond Triangle becomes evidence not only of Buddhist history but of Odisha’s place in world civilisation. This global afterlife raises new questions about ownership, interpretation, and the future of living communities around these ruins.

Ruins as Active Historical Agents

The Buddhist sites of Odisha demonstrate that ruins are never static. Across centuries, they have shifted roles—from monasteries to quarries, from sacred landscapes to archaeological sites, from local landmarks to global heritage candidates. Each transformation reflects the priorities of its time, shaped by power, policy, and perception.

Understanding Buddhist Odisha requires attention not only to when monuments were built but to how they were forgotten, reused, excavated, curated, and promoted. The afterlife of ruins reveals history as a continuous negotiation rather than a closed chapter. In this sense, the Diamond Triangle does not merely preserve the past; it exposes the processes by which the past is continuously remade.

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References

1. Chattopadhyaya, B.D. The Making of Early Medieval India. Oxford University Press.

2. Mitra, Debala. Buddhist Monuments. Sahitya Samsad.

3. Smith, Laurajane. Uses of Heritage. Routledge.

4. Archaeological Survey of India. Excavation Reports on Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri, and Udayagiri.

5. Thapar, Romila. Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. University of California Press.

6. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Buddhist Sites of Odisha: Diamond Triangle, Tentative List Dossier.

7. Chakrabarti, Dilip K. The Archaeology of Eastern India. Oxford University Press.