File:0112321 Ancient Varaha Narasimha Vishnu Varaha and inscriptions site, Eran Madhya Pradesh 027.jpg

English: Eran (ऐरण, Airan) is one of the earliest dated towns of ancient India whose monuments have survived. It is now a village located midst rolling hills, south of river Bina. It was a busy town before 600 CE, on the trading routes linking eastern kingdoms to those in west, as well as the northern to those in southwest India. The inscriptions, statues, temple remnants, mud fort, moat, and coins discovered here have been instrumental to a better understanding of ancient India. The oldest coins found here have inscriptions in Brahmi script, and these date from the 2nd century BCE. Later inscriptions are in later scripts, such as the Gupta scripts, and these call the town as Erakaya or Airaka – possibly related to the Naga-mythology of ancient Indian religions.

Some of the discoveries from Eran were moved in the 19th-century and early 20th-century to museums in India, and outside India. In the modern village of Eran, three sites remain. Of these, the most published and more frequently visited site is called "Ancient Site Eran" by ASI. The other two sites are east of the main site, closer to the village and the river. They have the famous inscription with the earliest epigraphical mention of Sati, and the remnants of another ancient Hindu temple.

The main Eran site was a large temple complex. But, almost all of that history survives as ruins and many platforms at the site. The surviving monuments include a pillar with inscription, a standing Varaha with another inscription, an anthropomorphic Narasimha (damaged legs, now lying flat), parts of a Vishnu temple, several other pillars and panels of Hindu artwork. The site has several minor inscriptions as well and a subset of ruins from lost Hindu temples.