Badami's Cave 3 Is the Largest of Four Rock-Cut Caves in the Chalukya Capital, and a Pillar Inscription Dates Its Completion as a Vishnu Temple to Saka 500, or 578 to 579 CE

Cave 3 at Badami, in Bagalkot district, Karnataka, is the largest of four rock-cut caves in a sandstone cliff, and a Sanskrit inscription on one of its pilasters (a flat pillar set into a wall) gives the year in which it was finished as a temple of Vishnu: Saka 500, which J. F. Fleet converted to 578 to 579 CE. It names the king Mangalesa of the early Chalukya dynasty, and Badami was their hill-fort capital, Vatapi. Britannica says Pulakeshin I, whose reign began in 543, took and fortified the hill fort of Vatapi.

The cave’s date rests on that one slab, and historians have disagreed over how to read it since the 1870s.

What the pilaster says

The slab measures about 25 by 43 inches (roughly 64 by 109 cm), and J. Eggeling, who published an edition in 1874 from tracings made by James Burgess, wrote that the letters were worn and hard to make out. Fleet re-edited the text in 1877. His translation dates it “five hundred of the years of the royal installation of the Saka king having expired,” in the twelfth year of the reign of Mangalisvara (the Mangalesa of later writers). Fleet pointed out that the text says the Saka era is counted from the installation, or coronation, of the Saka king, and he called that a more exact statement of the era’s starting point than he had seen before.

Mangalisvara is called “most excellent worshipper of (Vishnu as) the Holy One,” a rendering of the Sanskrit title parama-bhagavata. According to the text, he built a temple of Vishnu, gave gifts to Brahmans on the Karttika full moon, and on the installation of the Vishnu image granted a village. Fleet read the village as Lanjisvara. A daily meal for sixteen Brahmans is set up and food for wandering ascetics, and it hands the merit to the king’s elder brother Kirttivarma. Eggeling read the village name differently and marked it as doubtful.

Verses attributed to Vyasa close the record, warning against taking back land once given.

Whose twelfth year, and who began the cave

The slab dates the cave’s completion. Who first ordered the digging is not stated. Fleet’s 1882 history of the Kanarese dynasties says Kirtivarman I originated the cave and probably began it in his reign, with Mangalesa, his younger brother, finishing it. Henry Cousens, writing for the Archaeological Survey of India in 1926, gives both versions. In one chapter the cave was excavated by Kirtivarman I about 578. In another the inscription records that Mangalesa finished the construction under his brother’s orders. On its Badami page, the Bagalkot district administration says Mangalesha completed the caves and endowed them with a village when the Vishnu image was installed.

Reign dates differ by source. Fleet, in 1881, took “the twelfth year” to be Mangalesa’s and put his accession in Saka 489, which is 567 to 568. Eggeling had given Saka 488 (566). Fleet reported that Professor Bhandarkar read the twelfth year as Kirtivarman’s instead, and he disagreed. Britannica gives Kirtivarman I as reigning from 566 to 597, which puts the year 578 inside his reign. The Bagalkot page gives Mangalesha as 598 to 610 and also credits him with the 578 inscription, without saying which reading it follows. Every edition agrees on Saka 500 itself, and Cousens and Fleet both give about 578.

Four caves above the lake

UNESCO’s Tentative List entry places the four caves on the northern face of the southern hill at Badami. Per the Bagalkot page, the four are these: Cave 1 is Shaiva, with an 18-armed dancing Shiva; Caves 2 and 3 are Vaishnava; Cave 4 is Jain, with an image of Mahavira. Burgess, writing in 1877, called the Great Cave, as he named Cave 3, “by far the finest” of the series. He gave the verandah as nearly 70 feet (about 21 m) long. From the pillar fronts to the back wall of the hall is 48 feet (14.6 m), the shrine goes about 12 feet (3.7 m) further into the rock, and the ceiling is about 15 feet (4.6 m) high.

Cave 3 faces north. Its floor stands eight or nine feet above the court in front, and Burgess describes a stair entering from the west end of that square court. A platform runs along the front under a moulded cornice, and its dado is cut into more than thirty compartments, each holding two ganas, the dwarf figures that early sculptors liked to carve around a base. Along the verandah stand six pillars, each two and a half feet square, and two pilasters. India’s Tentative List entry gives the plan common to the Badami caves: an entrance porch, a pillared hall and a sanctum.

Vishnu in the verandah

The big panels are in the verandah. At the east end, Burgess found Vishnu seated on the coils of the serpent Sesha, with five hoods spread over his crown, four arms, and Garuda, his mount, at his side. Turning right, on the back wall, is Varaha, Vishnu in his boar form, who in the Puranic account lifts the earth from the ocean. Burgess describes him standing with one foot on a coil of a snake, with Prithivi, the Earth, on a lotus in his hand. Beside this panel is the inscribed pilaster.

At the west end is Narasimha, Vishnu as the man-lion, and across a pilaster from it a large Trivikrama panel, which Burgess describes as eight-armed and tied to the dwarf form of Vishnu, who crossed the worlds in three strides. Burgess also listed a Harihara, a single figure in which the left half is Vishnu and the right half Shiva. Cross-beams divide the verandah roof into seven recessed panels, and in the central one Burgess saw four-armed Vishnu ringed by eight figures he took to be the guardians of the directions.

Fergusson and Burgess compared the Trivikrama here to one in a Vaishnava cave at Mahabalipuram and judged the Badami panel the older of the two, by comparing details with sculptures at Ellora. That is a dating by style, set out in 1880. Those Pallava sculptures are in Mahabalipuram: the Pallava shore.

What the date does and does not show

Fergusson and Burgess wrote that Cave 3 was “the only cave-temple the age of which is known with certainty.” That is a claim from 1880 about the caves they were describing. Earlier dated rock-cut caves exist, such as the Mauryan ones in Barabar and Nagarjuni, though those are not Hindu temples. No source opened for this article calls Cave 3 the earliest Hindu cave temple in India or in the Deccan, so this article does not.

India’s Tentative List entry places Cave 3 in a longer sequence. The entry says skills developed at Ajanta were carried over to the Hindu caves at Aihole and Badami, and that at Badami the sanctum is joined to a pillared hall, a plan it contrasts with the earlier Hindu caves, which it calls rudimentary. Cousens compared it with the Lad Khan temple at Aihole: the Lad Khan pillars looked older to him, and he thought the architecture of Cave 3 “a distinct advance” in general style. Lad Khan is described in Aihole: the Meguti inscription of 634 and the Chalukya workshop of temple forms, and the dynasty’s builders at their most developed are in Pattadakal. For the Pallava capture of Vatapi, which Britannica dates to 641 to 647, see Pulakeshin II and the Chalukyas.

Planning a visit

The figures in this section come from official pages opened on 29 October 2026, and they can change. Distances first: the Bagalkot page puts Badami about 23 km from Pattadakal and 35 km from Aihole, and the Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India page gives about 22 km to Pattadakal. Incredible India names Badami railway station (code BDM) as the nearest station and the airports at Kalaburagi, Bengaluru and Hubballi, and recommends October to February. That page places the cave temples on the southwest side of Agastya Lake, which it says is believed locally to have been created by the sage Agastya.

Beside the lake, on its eastern bank, is the Bhutanatha group of temples. Incredible India dates the main Bhutanatha temple to the 7th century and gives its hours as 6:00 am to 7:00 pm. Badami’s Archaeological Museum is listed as open 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and closed on Fridays; the page says it displays local sculptures including Lajja Gauri images. None of the official pages opened for this article gives timings or ticket prices for the caves, so check at the site.

On status: UNESCO lists Pattadakal as a World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1987. The Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal group, which includes the Badami caves, was submitted by India to the Tentative List on 9 February 2015 and, on the UNESCO page archived on 21 October 2026, is still a Tentative List entry. A 2023 paper in the journal Life says UNESCO “recognized” the group in 2015, while the same paper’s abstract calls it a “candidate” site, which matches UNESCO’s own record.