“Dudhai’s Narasimha: An ancient marvel lost to time”, First post, October 12, 2025
“One icon lies deep in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh. From the district headquarters, a visitor drives to a village called Deogarh, also home to some great heritage. And from Deogarh, a forest range road takes a person to little-visited Dudhai. The road was originally built by the British, as per locals. And going by the bumpy nature of the drive, it could do with more post-monsoon maintenance. The forest around is dense and during the drive, one may go past the occasional person carrying off a bundle of sticks.
The destination lies just outside the inhabited area of Dudhai, at the edge of the forest. The vehicle has to be left at a little distance and the last patch covered on foot. The destination that the visitor is heading for is described on the website of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a ‘Rock-cut Narasimha’. Full marks to the ASI for downplaying one of India’s most magnificent sites! Nothing prepares a visitor for what he sees in this remote part of the country.
Built on a hill wall outside Dudhai is a striking visual representation of a mythological story. As a visitor looks up, an immense icon with an angry expression on its face stares back. The Narasimha is one of the strangest concepts of Hinduism and if one were to try and apply the belief that each of the ten ‘avatars’ or incarnations of Vishnu are representative of a human state and taken together represent the cycle of human evolution, then the case of Narasimha becomes a bit more puzzling…….”
Read full article at firstpost.com
