Unakoti: One Crore Less One Faces Cut into a Hillside

The name demands an explanation and the local tradition supplies one, in more than one version.

The principal story:

• Shiva was travelling to Kashi, accompanied by a crore of gods and goddesses
• They stopped for the night at this place
• Shiva told the whole company that they must rise before sunrise and continue
• In the morning, only Shiva woke at the appointed hour
• The rest were still asleep
• Shiva, angered, cursed them to remain there as stone images forever, and went on alone
• So there is a crore, less the one who left: unakoti

What the story is doing. It is an explanation of a fact on the ground, which is what these stories usually are.

Somebody looked at a hillside covered in carved faces, asked why they were there, and produced an account that explains both the number in the name and the fact that the images are static, arrested, permanently in place.

Stone figures that were once people who did not get up in time. That is a good story and it is a very direct reading of what the site looks like.

The second story. There is another tradition, about a sculptor.

• Kallu Kumhar, a devotee of Shiva and Parvati, wanted to accompany them to Kailasa
• Shiva refused, then set a condition: if Kallu could carve one crore images of Shiva in a single night, he could come
• Kallu worked all night
• By morning he had carved one less than a crore
• So he was not taken

What that story is doing. It is about the sufficiency of effort, and it is bleaker than the first.

He did the work. He did nearly all of it. He fell one short of an impossible target and the condition was applied literally.

Whether that is a story about divine strictness or about the futility of bargaining is left open, and the tradition tells it without a moral attached.

A third element. Some accounts hold that the images cannot be counted, and that anybody who tries to count them will arrive at a different number each time.

That is a motif that appears at many Indian sites, and it is worth noting what it does: it makes the number a matter of faith rather than of arithmetic, and it protects the name from being disproved.

Are there a crore of images. No. There are a substantial number of carvings, in the hundreds when the smaller ones are counted, not in the tens of millions.

Koti in these names should generally be read as meaning very many rather than as a literal count, in the same way that a thousand-name stotra or the eighty four lakh species of the tradition are not arithmetic statements.

Stating that plainly does not damage the site. The images are extraordinary at the number they actually are.

The Kal Bhairava identification. The principal face is called Unakotiswara Kal Bhairava.

Bhairava is the fierce form of Shiva.

• Arising when Shiva severed one of Brahma's heads, in the account of Brahma's pride
• Carrying the kapala, the skull, which stuck to his hand until the sin was expiated at Kashi
• Guardian of the kshetra, and every important Shiva site has its Bhairava
• At Kashi, Kala Bhairava is the kotwal, the city's magistrate, and no pilgrimage there is complete without his darshan
• Kalabhairava Ashtami, in Margashirsha, is his day

So the great face on this Tripura hillside is a Bhairava, and the fierce reading is consistent with the story, since the images are there because of a curse.

What is actually carved, described for somebody who will walk the site.

The Unakotiswara head:

• Cut into the rock face, facing outward
• The jata mukuta, the matted hair piled into a headdress, is the largest element and is carved with great elaboration
• A third eye on the forehead
• Large earrings
• The expression is severe rather than benign
• Flanked by two female figures at a much smaller scale

The scale point. Thirty feet is very large for an Indian rock cut head, and the disproportion between the central face and the flanking figures is deliberate: the deity is not on the same scale as anything around it.

The Ganesha figures:

• A very large four armed Ganesha in high relief
• A three headed Ganesha, which is uncommon and worth noting specifically
• Others in varying condition

The three headed Ganesha is the kind of thing that makes a site worth the journey. Ganesha with multiple heads is rare in the standard iconography, and its appearance here indicates a local tradition working somewhat independently.

The Nandi figures:

• Large stone bulls, partly buried in the ground
• Only the upper parts visible in places
• Which gives some idea of how much of the site is still under earth

The loose sculpture:

• Stone images placed rather than carved into the cliff
• Vishnu, Durga, Hara Parvati and others
• Scattered across the hillside and in and around the stream

Two techniques. The site has both rock cut work, carved directly into the hillside and immovable, and loose stone sculpture that was carved elsewhere and placed.

That combination suggests a long period of activity rather than a single project, with different hands at different times.

The stream. A watercourse runs through the site and some images are in or beside it, which produces one of the more striking things about Unakoti: sculpture with water running over it.

There are waterfalls on the hillside, particularly after rain, and the combination of falling water, forest and enormous carved faces is the reason people describe the site the way they do.

Comparison with other rock cut sites. To place it.

• Ellora and Ajanta, in Maharashtra, which are excavated caves and are on a different scale of ambition
• Mahabalipuram, in Tamil Nadu, with the Arjuna's Penance relief, which is the nearest comparison for open air relief carving on a rock face
• Badami and Aihole, in Karnataka
• Masrur, in Himachal Pradesh, the rock cut temple complex
• Dhamnar and Kalugumalai

How Unakoti differs. Those sites are architectural. Caves are excavated, facades are dressed, plans are laid out.

Unakoti is not architectural. It is images placed in a landscape, without a building around them, in forest, on a hillside, with water running through.

That gives it a completely different quality. You are not in a monument. You are walking in a wood and there are gods in the rock.

On dating and attribution. Being honest about what is not known.

• The date is not settled
• The patrons are not identified
• Whether it was a single tradition or several is not established
• The relationship to the Tripura royal house, which was later a substantial patron of Shakta temples, is not clear for this period
• The iconography is broadly Puranic and standard, but the execution is local

Sites like this are frequently written up with confident dates and attributions that the evidence does not support. It is better to say that a very large body of sculpture was made on this hillside over an uncertain period ending some centuries ago, by people whose names are not recorded, and that it is still worshipped.

The state deserves an account, since very few visitors from outside the region know anything about it.

The basics:

• A small state in the northeast, bordered on three sides by Bangladesh
• Connected to the rest of India through a narrow corridor to Assam and Mizoram
• Capital Agartala
• Hilly, forested, with a high rainfall

The Manikya dynasty:

• The royal house of Tripura, which ruled for a very long period until accession to India in 1949
• Kings took the title Manikya
• Their chronicle is the Rajmala, a verse history in Bengali
• They were substantial patrons of temples, most notably Tripura Sundari at Udaipur, described separately
• The capital moved over time: Rangamati, which became Udaipur, then Old Agartala, then Agartala

Tagore and Tripura. Worth noting.

Rabindranath Tagore had a long relationship with the Tripura royal house. Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya sent a message of appreciation after reading Tagore's early work, and successive maharajas supported him, including funding for Santiniketan.

Tagore visited Tripura several times, and his novel Rajarshi and play Visarjan are set in Tripura and are about the ending of animal sacrifice at a temple there.

That literary connection is real and it is one of the reasons Tripura's cultural history is better recorded than that of some of its neighbours.

Ujjayanta Palace:

• The royal palace at Agartala, built in the early twentieth century
• Named by Tagore
• Now a museum, and a good one, covering the culture of the northeast

The demographic history. This must be stated because it is the central fact of modern Tripura and it is not comfortable.

• Tripura was historically an indigenous majority state, with the Tripuri, Reang, Jamatia, Chakma, Halam and other communities
• Partition in 1947 and the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War brought very large numbers of Bengali refugees
• The indigenous communities became a minority in their own state within a few decades
• That demographic change produced land alienation, political displacement and prolonged insurgency from the 1970s to the 2000s
• The insurgency has largely ended and Tripura is now peaceful, but the underlying questions of land, language and representation remain live

Why state it. Because a guide that describes a state's temples without mentioning the largest thing that happened to its people is not a good guide, and because visitors who understand it will read what they see differently.

The languages:

• Bengali, the majority language
• Kokborok, the language of the Tripuri people, which is Tibeto Burman and is an official language of the state
• Various other community languages

Kokborok deserves a mention. It is written in Bengali script and in Roman script, and the question of which script it should use has been a live political issue, which is the sort of question that looks technical and is not.

Festivals:

• Durga Puja, which is very large, given the Bengali population
• Kharchi Puja, at Old Agartala, the worship of the fourteen deities, which is the state's most distinctive festival, described in the Tripura Sundari entry
• Garia Puja, of the Tripuri community
• Ker Puja
• Ashokashtami at Unakoti
• Diwali at Tripura Sundari, which is very large

Getting to Tripura. It is easier than people assume.

Agartala has flights from Kolkata, Guwahati, Delhi and other cities, and the flight from Kolkata is short. Rail connectivity to Agartala now exists. It is a small state and everything within it is a few hours' drive.

The difficulty is not access. It is that people do not think of going.

Unakoti is not a museum. It is a working pilgrimage site with an annual gathering.

Ashokashtami:

• The eighth of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, generally March or April
• The principal mela at Unakoti
• Draws very large numbers, from Tripura and from Bangladesh across the border
• Pilgrims bathe in the stream and worship at the images

What Ashokashtami is. The tithi is observed at several sites across eastern India.

• Ashoka here means without sorrow
• The ashoka tree is also associated with the day, and there is an observance of consuming ashoka buds
• At Bhubaneswar it is the day of the Lingaraja Rath Yatra, the Ashokashtami car festival
• It falls close to Rama Navami, the ninth, and the two are often observed together

Why Unakoti's mela is on this day is a local development rather than a pan Indian rule, and it is the day the site has kept.

Makar Sankranti also draws pilgrims here.

The bathing. The stream at Unakoti is used for ritual bathing at the mela, which is a straightforward instance of the water and shrine pairing that runs through this whole series.

The cross border dimension. Since Tripura is surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, and since the Hindu population of Bangladesh maintains connections to shrines on this side, sites like Unakoti and Tripura Sundari have historically drawn pilgrims from across the border, subject to visa and border regulation.

That is worth knowing as a fact about how this religious geography works. It did not stop being one region because a line was drawn through it in 1947, and the shrines on both sides continue to matter to people on both sides.

The site as a working shrine. This is the point to hold on to.

Unakoti is frequently written about as an archaeological curiosity, a mystery, a lost site in the jungle.

It is none of those. It is a Shiva site that people from the surrounding districts have worshipped at continuously, that has a mela on a fixed day of the year, and that has a priest and offerings and the ordinary business of a shrine.

The images are old and unusual, and the ASI looks after them, and both of those things are true at the same time as it being a place where people come to worship on Ashokashtami.

Tourism and conservation. There is tension here and it is worth naming.

• The site is being developed for tourism, with steps, walkways and facilities
• That improves access, particularly for older visitors, and brings income to a district that needs it
• It also risks changing the character of a place whose whole quality is that it is images in a forest
• Conservation of rock cut sculpture in a high rainfall forest environment is genuinely difficult, and doing nothing is not an option

What a visitor can do:

• Do not touch the carvings. Skin oils and abrasion damage stone over time and the cumulative effect of many hands is significant
• Do not climb on the images
• Do not leave litter, particularly plastic, in the stream
• Do not carve or write anything anywhere
• Follow the marked paths

Those are small things and they are what determines whether the site is still there in a recognisable condition in another century.

Getting there

• Unakoti, near Kailashahar, Unakoti district, northern Tripura
• Around 180 kilometres from Agartala by road, roughly five to six hours depending on the road
• Kailashahar is the nearest town, around 10 kilometres
• Agartala airport has flights from Kolkata, Guwahati, Delhi and other cities
• Kumarghat railway station is the nearest railhead
• Shared vehicles and taxis run from Kailashahar

Practicalities

• Most visitors stay at Kailashahar or make it a long day trip from Agartala
• Accommodation at Kailashahar is basic. Agartala has proper hotels
• It can be done as a stop on a northern Tripura circuit

Timings

• The site is open through the day. There may be a ticket

When to go

• Ashokashtami, the eighth of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, generally March or April, for the mela, though the site will be very crowded
• Makar Sankranti in January
• October to March for weather
• Just after the monsoon, when the waterfalls are running and the hillside is green, which is when the site looks best if you want it quiet

Avoid peak monsoon for walking the site, since the paths and rock get slippery and the leeches are active.

The walk

• The site involves steps and slopes down the hillside
• Steps have been built but it is still uneven ground in places
• Reasonable footwear with grip
• It is not a long walk but it is up and down
• Anybody with knee problems should know there is descending and then ascending on the way back

What to bring

• Water
• Insect repellent. It is forest, it is humid, and there are mosquitoes and, in the wet season, leeches
• Full sleeves and covered shoes in the wet season for the same reason
• A hat
• A camera. This is a site worth photographing

On leeches, since this is a forested hillside in a high rainfall area. They are harmless and unpleasant. Do not pull them off; salt, or simply waiting, works better and reduces the chance of infection. Tuck trousers into socks. They are only an issue in the wet season.

At the site

• It is a worship site. Behave accordingly
• Do not touch or climb on the carvings
• Do not litter, especially in the stream
• A local guide is useful, since the images are scattered and it is easy to miss things

Combining the visit. Northern Tripura circuit.

• Kailashahar town
• Jampui hills, further north, Tripura's highest range, known for orange orchards and for the orange festival in November, and for views
• Chabimura, on the Gomati river, which has huge rock cut images of Durga and other deities on a cliff face reached by boat, and which is the natural companion site to Unakoti
• Dumboor lake
• Neermahal, the water palace at Melaghar, built by the Manikya kings in a lake
• Tripura Sundari at Udaipur, the Shakti Peetha
• Agartala, with the Ujjayanta Palace museum

Chabimura is the pairing. If Unakoti interests you, Chabimura is the other half: enormous carvings, on a cliff, above a river, reached by boat, and even less visited.

Between them they make the case that Tripura has rock cut sculpture of a quality and scale that ought to be much better known.

A closing thought. A crore of gods lay down on a hillside for the night. One of them got up on time.

The rest are still there, in the rock, with trees growing over them and a stream running past, and once a year in Chaitra people come and bathe in the stream and worship the ones who overslept.

That is a story about lateness, and it has been kept for something like a thousand years by carving it into a hill.