When Monk Caves Were Taken Over by Tigers
Not long ago, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) — announced the remarkable discovery of 2000-year-old Buddhist caves located within the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Umaria District, Madhya Pradesh. The reserve spans 1,536.93 square kilometers.
In total, more than 50 Buddhist caves were found, belonging to the Hinayana (Theravāda) tradition. These caves were hewn into the mountain rock to serve as monastic residences (vassa retreats). Inside many of these caves, Brāhmī script inscriptions have been found carved into the stone walls. Additionally, five stone stupas were discovered standing amidst the forest (as seen in the photo). These stupas are made of red sandstone, stacked together block by block in classic stupa form.
This wildlife sanctuary was officially designated as a tiger and wildlife reserve in 1968 CE (B.E. 2511). Today, it is home to approximately 123 Bengal tigers.
Although the caves have been discovered, visiting them is incredibly difficult—not because they lie deep in dense forest or inside a protected park, but because the monastic caves have now become the resting dens of Bengal tigers!
At first, I had hoped to visit and explore them myself. But upon learning that they now serve as tiger residences, I had no choice but to raise the white flag.
သာဓိကာရ ပဋိဝေဒနာ
သာဓိကာရ ပဋိဝေဒနာ © ၂၀၂၁ ဘိက္ခု ဓမ္မသမိ (ဣန္ဒသောမ) သိရိဒန္တမဟာပါလက-ကာယာလယ. သဗ္ဗေ အဓိကာရာ ရက္ခိတာ.
ဣဒံ သာသနံ တဿ အတ္ထဉ္စ အာယသ္မတော ဓမ္မသာမိဿ ဉာဏသမ္ပတ္တိ ဟောန္တိ၊ ယေန ကေနစိ ပုဗ္ဗာနုညာတံ လိခိတ-အနုမတိံ ဝိနာ န ပုန-ပ္ပကာသေတဗ္ဗံ န ဝိတ္ထာရေတဗ္ဗံ ဝါ.
Content Source Declaration
All content published on this website, www.siridantamahapalaka.com, including but not limited to articles, Dharma talks, research findings, and educational resources, is intended solely for the purpose of Dhamma dissemination, study, and public benefit.
Some images and visual content used throughout this website are sourced from public domains, Google searches, and social media platforms. These are used in good faith for non-commercial and educational purposes. If any copyright holder has concerns regarding the usage of their content, please feel free to contact us for proper acknowledgment or removal.
A portion of the Dharma talks, especially those categorized under "Dharma Talk" and "Dependent Origination – Questions and Answers", have been translated from the teachings of respected Venerable Sayadaws. Proper reverence is maintained in delivering these teachings with accuracy and sincerity for the benefit of Dhamma practitioners.
We deeply respect the intellectual and spiritual contributions of all teachers and content creators. Our aim is to preserve, promote, and respectfully share the teachings of the Buddha.
©️ Copyright Notice
© 2021 Sao Dhammasami( Siridantamahapalaka) . All rights reserved.
This articles and its contents are the intellectual property of Venerable Ashin Dhammasami and may not be reproduced or distributed without prior written permission.
🔸 Disclaimer on Translations and Content Accuracy
While great care has been taken in translating Dhamma talks and related materials, any errors, inaccuracies, or interpretative issues that may be found within this blog are solely the responsibility of the author.
This website and its content are not affiliated with or officially represent any individual, group, institution, or monastery/temple or Musuem. All translations, interpretations, and editorial decisions have been made independently by the author with sincere intention for Dhamma sharing.
We humbly request the understanding and forgiveness of readers and the venerable teachers, should any shortcomings or misinterpretations arise.
