Evolution of Chaityas and Shrines Excavated at Udayagiri, District-Jajpur, Odisha, India -A Stratigraphical Analysis

Attempt has been made through the paper to study development of Buddhist shrines in India from the 6th century B.C. to about the 11th century A.D. in general and Udaygiri archaeological site in particular to show that the Buddhists adopted different types of building plans like elliptical, circular, apsidal and quadrilateral in different periods based on the ideological background of the particular period . In the present context of archaeological research, it is very difficult to reconstruct any clear picture of ideological background of chaitya-grihas or Buddhist shrines since the archaeological remains supported by epigraphical evidences of successive phases of construction do not give any clear picture of the original structure belonging to a particular period. As no earlier attempt was made in any of previous excavations to correlate the structural remains with the stratigraphic data, all important evidences relating to the development of Buddhist shrines in many sites are now lost. But Udaygiri site gives us ample evidences to relate the architectural style of buildings of the shrine with the Buddhist philosophy prevalent in the particular period