Community: Bundelkhand epigraphy

Rock inscription at Balkhandeswara on the northern slope of the hill fortress of Kalinjar in the Banda district in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh. The inscription which mentions a sāmanta named Vasanta is placed above a sculpture showing a water carrier, which is itself placed to the left of an ekamukhaliṅga. Several other such figures are found at Kalinjar. See Hans T. Bakker, The World of the Skandapurāṇa. Northern India in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014: 205-209.

This inscription accompanies an ascetic figure with jaṭāmukuṭa in one of the caves on the path leading to the Nīlakaṇṭha temple at the hill fortress of Kalinjar in the Banda district in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh. The figure of the ascetic is carved to the left of an ekamukha liṅga. next to  The name Bhāvasomeśvara indicates a Pāśupata ascetic (names starting with Bhāva- are a common feature of Pāśupatas and there is much other evidence for the presence of Pāśupatas at Kalinjar). The same name is know from a 12th-century pedestal inscription of a Śaiva ascetic at Menal (Rajasthan), another Pāśupata centre.

Ekamukhaliṅga shrine of the Bhāvasomeśvara inscription