UDAYAGIRI:Udayagiri is the most easterly peak of the Asia range, situated in Cuttack district. The hill contains two spurs forming a bay of sloping terrace which is covered with extensive archaelogical remains. The main peak rises about 304.8 metres(1000 ft.) from the ground level. At the foot of the hill there is a colossal image of Lokeswar holding a big lotus in the left hand.

In the southern part of the terrace at a little height from the base there is the temple of Mahakala. Near this temple the image of Vaisravana which is at present lodged in the Indian Museaum, Calcutta, was recovered from a brick mound. A little south of this image a colossal Buddha sitting in bhumisparsa mudra is located built in several pieces of stones. There is a gallery of Buddhist figures carved out of the rock on an adjacent hill.

RATNAGIRI: The potentiality of the site is attested not only by a host of beautiful Buddhist statues found on the surface but also by a number of impressive mounds which after excarvations may yield many more interesting facts to construct the history of Orissa. Recently, a mound has been exposed which has revealed the remains of the monastic complex consisting of cells, an open courtyard, varandah and a central shrine chamber with a colossal seated Buddha inside it. The monastic complex has been minutely planned, aesthetically designed and perfectly executed.

Ratnagiri is an outliner of the Asia range, situated in the Cuttack district on the bank of the river of Kelua (a branch of Birupa) in 20 degree 39'N. and 86 degree 20'E. Unlike Udayagiri and Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri is flat-topped and is covered with extensive ruins of Buddhist pantheon. Apart from the splendid sculptures the locale chosen by the Buddhists, as usual with them, is lovely. As is known, Buddhist hills, far from the madding crowd, and yet near enough to allow the monks to go for their daily round of begging alms in the town near by. One of the trees in Ratnagiri must be several hundred years old. Wedged between its roots and its mighty branches are ancient votive stupas and fragments of buildings. The stupa in its present form looks stunted, for the domical structure on the top, which was entirely circular, is gone. It is, neverthless, impressive in size and is made of superbly levigated clay bricks, rubbed fine, and in set in very thin mortar. The finish is so beautiful and the alignment so accurate that one has the felling that the chief mason examined and approved every single brick after careful scrutiny. Whilst the stupa was almost square in size, a retaining wall has been constructed around it in a circular form which might have served as circumambulatory path. The area round the main structure is almost entirely filled up with numberless votive and funerary stupas. Some of them are inscribed with the Buddhist creed in a type of characters ascribable to the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. The enormous compound has been designed and executed with great skills and devoted attentions to details.

There is an old stone temple dedicated to Mahakala on the top of the hill. It was most probably erected by the Somavamsi king Karna Keshari after the collapse of the Buddhist edifice. The presiding deity of the temple is a two-armed pot-bellied dwarfish figure holding a human skull in the left and an axe in the right hand.

Ratnagiri, undoubtedly, ranks with Nalanda and Taxila as among the largest Buddhist establishments anywhere in India. An epigraph excavated here clearly shows that Ratnagiri Mahavihara was in continuous use since Gupta period. Like Nalanda it was a leading religious and philosophical centre to which flocked the students and scholars alike to learn from the teachers on Buddhism. Prajna, a great Buddhist scholar, was sent from here to China in 795 A.D., to present a treatise on Gandharvyuha to the Chinese emperor Te-Tsong. Ratnagiri is also one of the most valuable art historical documents ever found in this country. It is a lithic record of at least seven hundred years of art in Orissa.