Girijatmaj Temple, Lenyadri

01Parvati’s tapas

The Ganesha Purana places Mata Parvati’s tapas on this hill above the Kukadi. She meditated on Ganesha for twelve years, and he promised to be born as her son. Here he came to her, and Mahadev named the child Gunesha; the same child would ride the peacock at Morgaon. So Ganesha at Lenyadri is Girijatmaj, the son of Girija, the daughter of the mountain. The murti is not carved in the round. It is a broad face of Ganesha on the rock wall of the cell, thickly coated with sindoor.

02A monks’ hall that became a shrine

Lenyadri is a row of about thirty caves cut into the cliff north of Junnar between the first and third centuries CE, most of them dwellings for Buddhist monks. Cave 7 is the largest excavation around Junnar, a hall about 17 metres by 15 with twenty small cells. At some later date the two central cells of its back wall were joined to house Ganesha, and the hall became the sabha-mandapa. Both traditions sit together in the rock here, and the other caves stand as the monks left them. A climb of 283 steps leads up to it. The caves are a protected monument of the Archaeological Survey of India.