Vidisha: A monolith rock sculpture discovered in MP’s Vidisha district has turned out to be one of Lord Shiva’s largest statues, estimated to be around 1,500 years old and curiously left on the ground rather than being raised. State convener of Intach Madan Mohan Upadhyay declared a day before Mahashivratri, “It is the world’s largest Nataraja sculpture. The ruins have a lot of potentials to become a popular tourist destination both nationally and internationally.”
According to Upadhyay, Intach has completed documentation of the ancient site (15 kilometres from Ganjbasoda and 140 kilometres from Bhopal) and will submit a report. The Vidisha district administration, the tourism department of Madhya Pradesh, and the state archaeological department are all working on ways to preserve this rich history.
A single rock was used to create the gigantic sculpture, which is 9 metres long and 4 metres wide. It’s so large that Intach had to employ a drone to capture it in one frame, revealing for the first time that it’s a dancing Shiva, he added. Intach has been working at the site of Udaipur, a city founded by Parmar monarch Udayayditya in 1059AD, for the past year or so.
The Nataraja sculpture predates these ruins. The village and associated infrastructure of palaces, temples, water bodies, bastions, fortification wall and the gates to the city and innumerable monuments speak volumes about Udaipur, Upadhyay said. The place is known all over Madhya Pradesh for the Neelkantheshwar Mahadev temple, an ASI protected monument that attracts a large number of tourists, especially on Maha Shivaratri. The story of the creation of this place along with the Neelkantheshwar temple of Lord Shiva is written in the inscriptions, which are now preserved in the Gwalior museum.