Unakoti in Tripura Holds Colossal Rock-Cut Shiva, Durga and Ganesha Reliefs, Reported by the Archaeological Survey in 1921 and Placed on UNESCO's Tentative List in 2022

Unakoti is a forested hillside about 8 km from Kailashahar in northern Tripura where giant Shiva heads, a seated Ganesha 22 feet high and a colossal Uma-Maheshwar are cut into the rock beside a stream. The district administration puts the central Shiva head, called Unakotiswara Kal Bhairava, at about 30 feet including a 10-foot headdress. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) described the group in its annual report for 1921 to 1922 as one of the most important discoveries in Bengal that year, and India submitted it to UNESCO’s Tentative List on 13 December 2022.

What is carved on the hill

UNESCO’s entry, written by India, divides the images into two kinds: large figures cut into the vertical rock and fallen boulders, and smaller loose sculptures scattered over the hill. The protected area is 150 acres. The stream that runs down the middle forms three pools, which the entry calls kundas, and it says they figure in the annual fair.

The central Shiva head has a vertical third eye, a mouth drawn as a narrow slit with vertical lines for teeth, and a moustache ending in a loop. The headgear and ear ornaments, UNESCO says, show the influence of tribal art. Carved above the head are two women, and the one on the left stands on a lion and is identified as Durga. Nearby are a trident and three Nandi bulls, partly buried, according to the district site.

Other panels, as the UNESCO entry lists them, include:

• Shiva as Gangadhara, with his hair falling in ropes, beside the approach path.
• A Shiva with Durga on one side and the river Ganga on the other.
• Shiva and Parvati as the hunter couple Kirata and Kirati.
• Shiva burning Kama, the god of love, for breaking his meditation.
• A Hari-Hara, the fused form of Vishnu and Shiva.
• A huge Uma-Maheshwar, which local people call Hirimba.

The Ganesha group sits a little further down the stream. A seated Ganesha, 7 metres or 22 feet by UNESCO’s figure, has two standing elephant-headed figures to his right and a four-armed Vishnu at the far end. The two standing figures have narrow waists, three or four tusks, and six and eight arms. The ASI’s 1921 to 1922 report called them unique, connected with the cult of Ganesha but unlike his usual image. Weathered stone images of Vishnu, Hara-Gauri, Narasimha, Hanuman and others are kept in a shed on top of the hill. Two four-faced lingas and one single-faced linga were found there as well.

The ASI’s Guwahati Circle gives the Shiva head as more than 6 metres high. That sits with the district’s figure if the 10-foot headdress is taken off the 30 feet, which leaves 20 feet, about 6 metres. The two sources do not say they are measuring the same thing.

How the Survey found the hill in 1921

Captain Williams, then British political agent to the Tripura princely state, brought Unakoti to the ASI’s notice in 1914, the 1921 to 1922 report says. The report adds that a Bengali pamphlet was the only other publication on the site, and that the Rajmala, the Bengali verse chronicle of the Tripura royal family, has two or three references to rulers visiting the holy place. UNESCO’s entry also names A. K. Chaudhuri (1910 to 1911) among the earliest published mentions.

The ASI’s archaeological superintendent first visited in November 1921. At his request, the report says, the state’s divisional officer opened a road to the hill, cleared the jungle and loose earth from the slopes, and uncovered several sculptures not seen before. The Ganesha group, it records, was in better condition than the other figures because it had stayed buried under earth. A Shiva head and a four-faced linga appear as plates in the same volume. The report’s own words on the people who made the carvings are that the activity ran over “a fairly long period”, and it blames heavy rain and frequent earthquakes for the wear.

The report also says the annual fair then fell in the month of Pausha, January to February, when state officials usually cut a path through the bamboo.

The date: what each source says

The sources give different dates, and all of them rest on style rather than a laboratory dating. None of the pages I read cites a radiocarbon, excavation or inscription date for the reliefs.

• ASI, 1921 to 1922: the report calls it “extremely difficult to fix the period” because the north-east has no comparable material. It reads the hilltop images as no earlier than the 11th or 12th century, and concludes the site has been sacred to Shiva worship from the 8th to 9th centuries at the least, “if not some centuries earlier”.
• UNESCO’s entry and the ASI Guwahati Circle: the large reliefs belong to about the 8th to 9th century CE. UNESCO gives the ground as style and says the work predates Manikya rule and may have been patronised by the “Deb” generation of Sri Bhumi.
• The Press Information Bureau (2016) and the district website: the 7th to 9th century, with the district site adding “if not earlier”. Incredible India says the 7th century or even earlier.
• Dasgupta and Bhowmik, Tripura University (2020): a conclusion of the 8th to 11th century, though another passage in the same paper has the reliefs made in the 11th century.

The one inscription at the site is a pair of short records in old Bengali characters of the 11th to 12th century on a four-faced linga. UNESCO and the ASI report both say it mentions a Sri Jayadeva, probably a pilgrim. The loose sculptures, UNESCO says, are better made than the carvings on the slope and are dated on style to the 11th to 12th century. On the ASI’s 1921 to 1922 reading, then, the hill was in use from the 8th or 9th century and was still drawing pilgrims in the 11th to 12th.

A local style, and what scholars read into it

UNESCO says the anatomy is treated only in its broadest outline, and that the ornaments reflect local tribes, so the gods appear in “the local craft tradition”. Its entry compares the ensemble to Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta and the Arjuna’s Penance relief at Mahabalipuram, and argues that those panels belong to larger temple complexes, whereas Unakoti is a forest hillside used as the canvas. The same entry says Devtamura, the rock-cut site in southern Tripura with about 37 panels, is later (14th to 15th century in India’s account) and more refined.

Scholars read the style in different ways. Projit Kumar Palit, author of a 2004 History of Religion in Tripura, writes that most of the faces have no eyebrows and that the ears carry the dheri ornament worn by Tripura’s tribal people. He argues that the heads stand for the Chaturdasa Devata, the Fourteen Gods of the Tripuri people, who are worshipped as heads, and he links the three-eyed crowned Shiva to the Rajmala’s account of the dynasty’s founder Trilochana. He also says no inscription or monument has yet shown that a devaraja cult, the Southeast Asian worship of a deified king, reached Tripura. That link is an inference. Dasgupta and Bhowmik read the multiple arms and extra tusks as signs of Tantric Buddhism, and UNESCO says some scholars do the same for the two standing elephant-headed figures. The 2016 PIB note also says the site shows strong evidence of Buddhist art.

One less than a crore, in three tellings

Unakoti means “one less than a crore” in Bengali, and a crore is 10 million. The ASI’s 1921 to 1922 report gave a reason from the pilgrimage tradition. Kashi is the only Koti-tirtha, a holy place worth a crore, either for the crore of Shiva emblems it is said to hold or for its religious merit, and every other place that came near fell one short. The report adds that the name is also used for a holy place at Biswanath in Assam’s Tezpur district.

The local story is told two ways in official pages. The district administration and Incredible India say that Shiva, travelling to Kashi with a crore of gods and goddesses, halted for the night and told them to wake before sunrise. Only Shiva woke, so he went on alone and cursed the rest into stone. UNESCO’s entry says the gods met on the eighth day of the bright fortnight of Chaitra to create another Vrindavan, and Shiva cursed those who overslept in the same way. None of the official pages gives a count of the carvings.

The UNESCO listing and the size claims

India’s submission is dated 13 December 2022 and cites World Heritage criteria (i) and (iv). PTI reported that the ASI announced the listing on a Tuesday, which was 20 December 2022, along with Vadnagar and the Sun Temple at Modhera. ETV Bharat quoted the Union culture and tourism minister as saying the list then stood at 52 sites. A Tentative List is the step before nomination: Outlook, quoting UNESCO’s website, describes it as an inventory of properties a country “intends to consider for nomination”. The PIB’s September 2023 list of India’s Tentative List properties carries Unakoti, with 2022 as the year of submission.

Two government texts call the carvings the biggest of their kind. The PIB’s 2016 note on Tripura’s Republic Day tableau says they are the largest bas-relief sculpture in India, and Incredible India says the largest bas relief structures in India. UNESCO’s 2022 submission says one of the tallest. None of the three names who measured or compared.

The Survey’s work continues. On 25 April 2026, the PIB reported, the Union Secretary for the Development of the North Eastern Region visited Unakoti, asked about the ASI’s works there and reviewed measures to improve the site.

Reaching Unakoti

Distances vary by source. The district website, checked on 5 November 2026, says the site is about 8 km from Kailashahar and about 22 km from Dharmanagar by road, and that Agartala airport is about 178 km from Kailashahar. The nearest railway station is Kumarghat, 26 km from Kailashahar, and buses link Kailashahar with Agartala, Guwahati, Silchar and Shillong. UNESCO puts the site 185 km from Agartala, and the PIB’s 2016 note says 186 km.

The fair, called Ashokastami Mela, falls in the month of Chaitra, which UNESCO gives as April to May and the district site as April. The ASI’s 1921 to 1922 report put it in Pausha. I could not open the Tripura Tourism pages, so check the current date and entry terms with the Unakoti district administration before a visit. Kailashahar is the headquarters of Unakoti district.