It is widely believed that Vārānasī (Benares) ranks among the oldest holy cities on earth. Archaeological and textual sources, however, begin only to testify to the construction of sacred space in the first millennium AD. A significant discrepancy is found between the archaeological data (mainly seals) and early textual sources belonging to the 5th to 8th centuries. While seals provide us with the names of temples that apparently were frequented by the ordinary pilgrim, the oldest Māhātmya text that has recently become available, three chapters of the ‘original’ Skandapurāna, depicts Vārānasī as a place of ascetics and yogis. The spheres of devotion and world-renouncing are further complicated in the 11th and 12th centuries, when Vārānasī is made the political capital of the Gāhadavāla dynasty. Inscriptions reveal yet another dimension of sacred space, that of state ritual. After the destruction of the town by the Muslim conquerors, a process of reconstruction sets in during the 13th and 14th centuries, resulting eventually in the sacred Vārānasī as we know it today.

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Patronage by the royal court of religious institutions and foundations is one of the hallmarks of the development of India under the rule of the Gupta and Vākāṭaka kings (4th–5th centuries). This patronage was extended also to religious movements other than the king's own persuasion. The evolving culture of religious tolerance and enthusiasm is apparent in the temple monuments of the time. In this article we focus on four archeological sites where these developments become best visible: Udayagiri, Māṇḍhaḷ, Rāmagiri (Ramtek), and Mansar. The close relationship of the Gupta and Vākāṭaka realms is investigated in its local settings. Renewed attention is given to the ‘Mandhal Inscription, Year 5’ of the Vākāṭaka king Rudrasena II and the deity on whose authority the charter was issued: Muṇḍasvāmin. It is argued that the name Muṇḍa refers to no one else than the Gupta queen of Rudrasena II, Prabhāvatī Guptā. During the last decade, excavations in Mansar (5 km west of Ramtek) have brought to light the state sanctuary of the youngest son of Prabhāvatī, Pravarasena II. The findings there are placed within the tradition that can be traced back, through Rāmagiri and Māṇḍhaḷ, to the religious foundations in Udayagiri.

InThe Ramtek Inscriptions[I] (hereafter RI) mention was made of a Vākāṭaka inscription in the Kevala-Narasiṁha temple on Ramtek Hill, the discovery of which was reported inIAR, 1982–83, 137. The credit for first discussing, as well as editing the text goes to the Director of the Archaeological Survey and Museums of Maharashtra, Dr. A. P. Jamkhedkar. In an article which appeared in 1986 in R. Parimoo (ed.),Vaiṣṇavism in Indian arts and culture(pp. 335–41), Jamkhedkar attributed the inscription to Prabhāvatī Guptā (op. cit., 340), an attribution for which he adduced arguments in a subsequent article that was published in M. S. Nagaraja Rao (ed.),Kusumāñjali, vol. i in 1987 (pp. 217–23).

The first fruit of Minoru Hara's life-task-project to clarify the early history of theŚaiva religion appeared in the Indo-Iranian Journal of 1958 under the title Nakulīśa-Pāśupata-Darśanam. This was followed by the submission of his dissertation, Materials for the study of PāśupataŚaivism, to the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies of Harvard University in 1966 (Hara 1967). Ever since, Hara has contributed to the research into the history of the Pāśupata religion by a continuous series of meticulous studies. 1 Thanks to these studies our knowledge of this enigmatic but fascinating branch of early Hinduism has significantly increased. Paucity of sources, however, has inevitably hampered our understanding of the process of origin and spread of this religious movement. Hara, like other scholars before him, duly recognized that the puranic text corpus contains numerous references to the Pāśupata religion. Yet, due to inconsistencies of all sorts and uncertainty as to their exact dates, he considered, rightly, the use of these texts for historic purposes a hazardous affair and consequently assigned them to the periphery of historical research. That is to say, for the time being, since, Some day in the future, when all Purān . ic texts are critically edited and the interrelationships among them established, they may help us in tracing the history of PāśupataŚaivism. (Hara 1967, 12 f.) * The first version of this article was published in Wezler, Albrecht & Ryutaro Tsuchida