Siddhachal Caves

Siddhachal Caves or Siddhanchal Jain Collosi are Jain cave monuments and colossal carved into the rock face inside the Urvahi Gate of the Gwalior Fort in Gwalior, India. There are the most visited among the five groups of Jain rock carvings in the Gwalior Fort hill. They were built over time starting in the 14th-century, but most are dated to the 15th-century CE. Many of the statues were defaced and destroyed under the orders of the Muslim Emperor Babur of the Mughal dynasty in the 16th century, while a few repaired and restored after the fall of the Mughal dynasty and through the late 19th century by Scindia dynasty and Jain community.

The statues depict all 24 Tirthankaras. They are shown in both seated Padmasana posture as well as standing Kayotsarga posture, in the typical naked form of Jain iconography. The reliefs behind some of them narrate scenes from the Jain legends. The site is about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the South-East Group of Gopachal rock cut Jain monuments and about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) northwest of the Teli Temple within the Gwalior Fort.

The Siddhachal Jain collosi cave temple is one of the Archaeological Survey of India's Adarsh Smarak Monument along with other monuments in the Gwalior Fort.

Location

The Siddhachal collosi cave temples are located inside fortifications of the Urvahi valley, a part of the fort of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, immediately below the northwestern walls of the fortress. The Gwalior city and the fort is connected to other Indian cities by major highways NH 44 and 46 (Asian Highway 43 and 47), Gwalior junction railway station and Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia Airport (IATA: GWL).