Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c8.s7: Minor Miscellaneous Remains in Khāndesh

Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c8.s7

Language: English

Minor Miscellaneous Remains in Khāndesh

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At Pimpalgāon Budruk, ten miles south-east of Pāchora, is the temple of Hari-Hareśvara, standing at the junction of the Bāvulā and Dabbā streams about a mile south of the village. It faces west. Though originally an old temple it has been almost entirely rebuilt with brick rubble and plaster masonry, and is now of no account architecturally. The modern finials, which are stuck upon many of these temples, are remarkable for their ugliness and inappropriateness.

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Kurhād Khurd, seven miles from Māiji railway station. There is here a small old ruined temple, but it is of no particular interest. The shrine walls and part of the west walls remain. In the shrine is a *liṅga*, which, since the temple faces north, points its *śaluṅkā* toward the doorway.

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Lohāra, fourteen miles east by north from Pāchora. The ruins of an old temple, with very plainly moulded walls, on the Sonāi stream about a mile south of the village, called Tapeśvara.

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Shendurni, sixteen miles east of Pāchora, has a small ruined temple of Viśveśvara or Viśdevali. It has had an inscription covering about three feet by two feet of the outer wall on the south side, but it is too much defaced to make anything out of it. Over the shrine door is an image of Ganapati. Numbers of little slender pillars are inserted between the larger ones for support.

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Gārkhed, eleven miles south of Bhusāval, possesses the ruins of what has once been a very fine temple of the best class. Portions, only, of the plinth and walls of the back of the shrine now remain, shewing the mouldings of the basement and a portion of the richly sculptured wall above it. For the rest, the addition of mud walls has preserved the place as the habitation of the god.

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Lāling, six miles south of Dhulia. To the south of the village, by the roadside, is a small old temple, which consists of a shrine and antechamber only, the rest having been destroyed. The roof has been closed in with plaster masonry. The walls, which are for the most part original, are much weather-worn and do not appear to have been of first class workmanship.

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been a Musalmān mausoleum, canted over off its basement into the sand at such an angle that a person may stand upon the accumulated sand outside and look down into the interior over the tops of the four walls, the dome having slid off. The four walls just hold together in an apparently uninjured state.

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ERANDOL.

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In the middle of the town at Erandol, thirty-seven miles east of Dhulia, is a large solidly-built old quadrangle known as the Pāndāva's Vādā. It is the remains of one of those strongly built and enclosed mosques—or rather partly mosque and partly fort—which were erected in the early days of Muhammadan rule, and is of the general plan upon which the great ‘Adina Masjid at Anhilvād-Paṭṭan was probably built. Like the latter, the greater part of this building, at the west end of the courtyard, seems to have been built of the remains of older Hindu temples. The courtyard and the mosque were enclosed by a lofty substantial stone wall, having high arched recesses all around the inner side, in each of which is a barred or grated window. There appears to have been a fine porch before the entrance to the courtyard on the east, but it is now represented by a huge pile of fallen masonry, over which the visitor has to climb to reach the interior. The mosque which, as usual, occupied the whole width of the west end of the enclosure, has almost entirely disappeared; the central bay only remains, and this has been enclosed by mud walls and is still used as a mosque. Of the rest, all, except a few solitary blocks, has disappeared, leaving some beautifully carved miḥrābs, or prayer niches, in the back wall, which are partly buried in accumulated debris. (Plate XLI.)

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The Hindus claim the place as a Hindu building which had been appropriated by the Muhammadans, but this is not quite correct. The building, as it now stands, is purely Muhammadan, but, as already mentioned, it has in great part been built, as all the earlier mosques were, of pilfered material. Judging by the few columns that now remain, the whole of the pillars of the mosque were probably taken from some Hindu temple or temples; and, where the courtyard wall is broken down in places, carved temple stones and broken images may be seen built into the interior. The beautiful miḥrābs, with their Persian inscriptions above them, are purely Musalmān work, though carried out in Hindu spirit, and, probably, by Hindu workmen. They remind one much of the designs of temple doorways. A Hindu temple possibly once existed here, and may have occupied the site on which the mosque now stands—nothing more probable—but the Hindus have now not the shadow of a claim to the place.

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One of the inscriptions tells us that “The building of this Jāmi‘ Masjid was finished during the reign of the Defender of Islām and ‘Breaker of Idols,’ Jahāngīr Bādshāhi Ghāzi. May God perpetuate his kingdom! Dated the fifth month [or fifth of the month] of Zūl-Hijjah, in the fifth year of his accession” (A.D. 1610). The reference here to Jahāngīr, as the breaker of idols, would seem to imply that Hindu shrines had been raided and dismantled to provide material in this case.

Linked texts (1)

Harihareshwara Temple