ELURU TOURISM

Guntupalli Caves

The Guntupalle or Guntupalli Group of Buddhist Monuments is located near Kamavarapukota, Eluru district, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. It is around 40 km away from Eluru.[1] The rock-cut part of the site has two Buddhist caves, a chaitya hall and a large group of stupas.[2] The chaitya hall has a rare carved stone entrance replicating wooden architecture, a simpler version of that at the Lomas Rishi Cave.[3] There are remains of structural buildings in brick and stone, including remains of two vihara made of brick, as well as excavated caves at two levels, including an unusual structural chaitya hall (that is, one built above ground). The core of this consists of the stone stupa with an enclosed path around it allowing ritual parikrama (circumambulation). They mostly date to 200-0 BCE, with some sculptures added later. The main building above ground is in brick, around a stone stupa, with over 30 smaller stupas on a terrace in front of it. There are ruins of two other buildings.[4] During excavation, three relic caskets were found.[2] The caskets had many precious elements like gold, silver, crystal beads. The bronze image of Padmapani was found along with one of the caskets. The inscription on the casket was in the Devanagari script which indicates the year as from the 9th to 10th century CE

Earlier as it is well known the most natural instinct of man for many centuries during the pre-historic period was to find shelter in caves and rock cut shelters. There were no monumental buildings consciously built by man, but naturally available in nature. As the dawn of the history emerged in early India, natural cave and caverns began to be selected for the dwelling of the monks during the rainy season known as Vassavasa when peregrination was not possible. Monks always practices some religious prayers by living spiritual life alone or with a group of monks. They live a very simple life and spend all their time in religious activities. That is the reason why they always choose such type of places where the common habitation is thin for being away from the posh activities of society. In developing such kind of peaceful environment most of them settled at the hill slopes, in forests and at the banks of rivers. At the initial stage to safeguard them self during the different seasons of rainy, winter and summer they starts dwelling into the open ground called pits and they used to take shelter in them by covering them with leaves.

Excavated into the sandstone cliff, the monastery contains a series of cells of varying dimensions meant for the monks to live in. It has a main entrance with the windows on sides, a narrow terrace and varandha. Both the entrances as well as the widows invariably bear arched facades akin to that of vritta chaitya. Marked by its simplicity the entire monastery is devoid of any ornamentation or decoration and thus attributed to the earliest Buddhist monastic architecture. Some of the cells were provided with deep cut channels to facilitate the rainwater drain in to a natural fissure located on the backside of the monastery.This rock cut vihara, located at a higher elevation of the hill is relatively smaller in dimension. In all there are five cells in it, which are crudely excavated and some remained unfinished. Due to the ravages of nature its façade was badly affected leaving behind traces of gables on it.