In which one of the following states are the Guntupalle Buddhist Caves located?

Correct — A, Andhra Pradesh. Guntupalle, more often written Guntapalle or Guntupalli, is a rock-cut Buddhist site in the hills near Kamavarapukota in Eluru district of Andhra Pradesh, and NCERT's art textbook names it twice as the principal cave site of the Andhra coast. What makes it worth remembering is not just where it is but what stands there: a circular chaitya hall with a stupa inside it and a chaitya arch carved over the entrance, a group of small vihara caves with vaulted roofs and chaitya-arch decoration on the outside, and structured brick stupas and monasteries in the open — all on one hill. NCERT calls it 'among the very unique sites where the structured stupas, viharas and the caves are excavated at one place.' The excavations go back to about the second century BCE, which puts Guntupalle in the same early horizon as the western Deccan caves at Bhaja and Pitalkhora rather than among later work, and independent Buddha images are found here as at Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda nearby.

• (b)Karnataka — Karnataka's entry in this chapter is Sannati in Gulbarga district, the largest excavated stupa site in the State, whose sculptural relief resembles Amaravati's. It is a stupa site, not a Guntupalle.
• (c)Tamil Nadu — Tamil Nadu has early Buddhist and Jain rock-cut beds and later Pallava rock-cut architecture at Mahabalipuram, but no site of this name. The Andhra coast, not the Tamil country, is where the early Buddhist cave and stupa complexes cluster.
• (d)Kerala — Kerala has almost no rock-cut Buddhist cave tradition of this kind; its early rock-cut work is a small number of cave temples. The chaitya-and-vihara excavations of the peninsula are concentrated in the western Deccan and in coastal Andhra and Odisha.

Indian rock-cut Buddhist architecture comes in two functional types that go together. A chaitya, or chaitya-griha, is a prayer hall cut into rock with a stupa at its far end for congregational worship; a vihara is the residential block where monks lived, usually a hall with small cells cut around it. From about the second century BCE these were excavated in three main belts — the western Deccan of Maharashtra (Ajanta, Bhaja, Karla, Kanheri, Nashik, Junnar), coastal Andhra Pradesh (Guntupalle, Anakapalli), and Odisha (Udayagiri-Khandagiri, which is Jain).

The route to the answer is regional, not lexical. Ask which parts of India actually carry an early Buddhist cave tradition, and the peninsular options thin out at once: Karnataka's early Buddhist remains are stupa sites, Tamil Nadu's rock-cut architecture is later and Pallava, and Kerala barely features. Coastal Andhra is the one option in the list that belongs to the Buddhist cave map, and it is the region of Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Anakapalli and Guntupalle. Two printed and spelling points, neither of which changes what is asked: the paper writes Guntupalle where NCERT writes Guntapalle and the Archaeological Survey signboards write Guntupalli, and the district is now Eluru, carved out of the old West Godavari district in 2022.

• Guntupalle is a rock-cut Buddhist site in the hills near Kamavarapukota, Eluru district, Andhra Pradesh.
• Its chaitya cave is circular, with a stupa standing in the circular hall and a chaitya arch carved at the entrance — a plan closer to the early apsidal and circular halls than to the later pillared ones.
• NCERT dates the excavations to about the second century BCE, with later additions all of the vihara type.
• The site is unusual in carrying structured stupas and monasteries built in the open alongside the caves cut into the hill.
• Anakapalli near Visakhapatnam, of the fourth to fifth centuries CE, has the biggest rock-cut stupa in the country; Sannati in Gulbarga district is Karnataka's largest excavated stupa site.

• Reading the name as a Kannada or Malayalam place-name because of the -palle ending; -palle and -palli are common Telugu village suffixes too.
• Assuming every peninsular rock-cut site is Pallava or Chalukya, and so answering Tamil Nadu or Karnataka by reflex.
• Confusing Guntupalle with Guntur district; the site is in Eluru district, though Guntur is indeed the district of Amaravati.

Usually as a plain site-to-State question, sometimes as a pairs item matching cave sites to States, and occasionally as a chaitya-versus-vihara definition question built on the same body of material.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In Buddhist rock-cut architecture, a hall built to house a stupa for congregational worship is known as a

  • (a)vihara
  • (b)chaitya
  • (c)torana
  • (d)harmika

  Answer(b) chaitya — the chaitya-griha is the prayer hall enshrining a stupa, while a vihara is the monks' residential monastery.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of an early Buddhist site and its State is correctly matched?

  • (a)Sannati : Andhra Pradesh
  • (b)Anakapalli : Odisha
  • (c)Guntupalle : Andhra Pradesh
  • (d)Pitalkhora : Karnataka

  Answer(c) Guntupalle : Andhra Pradesh — Sannati is in Karnataka, Anakapalli is in Andhra Pradesh and Pitalkhora is in Maharashtra.