Lenyadri

Lenyadri, also called Ganesh Lena or the Ganesh Pahar caves, is a set of about 30 Buddhist rock-cut caves in a cliff about 4.8 kilometres north of Junnar in Pune district. They date from the 1st to the 3rd century AD and face south, with 26 of them numbered in sequence. Two, Caves 6 and 14, are chaitya halls and the rest are viharas, with cells and long stone benches, along with rock-cut cisterns, two of them inscribed.

At some later date two central cells of Cave 7, a former vihara, were turned into a shrine to Ganesha. It is now one of the Ashtavinayaka, the eight principal Ganesha shrines of western Maharashtra, and regional tradition identifies it as Girijatmaja, the cave where Parvati wished for a child and Ganesha was born. The name joins the Marathi lena, cave, with the Sanskrit adri, mountain.