Dashavatara Temple, Deogarh

Dashavatara Temple
Deogarh Dashavatara Hindu Temple
Dashavatara Temple, Deogarh
Religion
AffiliationHinduism
DistrictLalitpur district
DeityVishnu
Location
LocationBetwa River valley
StateUttar Pradesh
CountryIndia
Geographic coordinates24°31′35.8″N 78°14′24.4″E / 24.526611°N 78.240111°E / 24.526611; 78.240111
Architecture
StyleNagara
Completedc. 500 CE[1][2]

The Dashavatara Temple is an early 6th century Hindu temple located at Deogarh, Lalitpur district, Uttar Pradesh which is 125 kilometers from Jhansi, in the Betwa River valley in northern-central India.[3][4] It has a simple, one cell square plan and is one of the earliest Hindu stone temples still surviving today.[3][5] Built in the Gupta Period, the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh shows the ornate Gupta style architecture.[6][7]

The temple at Deogarh is dedicated to Vishnu, but includes in it small footprint images of various deities such as Shiva, Parvati, Kartikeya, Brahma, Indra, the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, as well as a panel showing the five Pandavas of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.[3][4] The temple was built out of stone and masonry brick.[8] Legends associated with Vishnu are sculpted in the interior and exterior walls of the temple. Also carved are secular scenes and amorous couples in various stages of courtship and intimacy.[3][4]

According to Alexander Lubotsky, this temple was built according to the third khanda of the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana, which describes the design and architecture of the Sarvatobhadra-style temple, thus providing a floruit for the text and likely temple tradition that existed in ancient India.[9] Though ruined, the temple is preserved in a good enough condition to be a key temple in the Hindu temple architecture scholarship, particularly the roots of the North Indian style of temple design.[4][10][11]

The Dashavatara temple is locally known as Sagar marh, which literally means "the temple on the tank", a name it gets from the square water pool cut into the rock in front.[12]

  1. ^ Dasavatara Temple Plan, Cornell University
  2. ^ T. Richard Blurton (1993). Hindu Art. Harvard University Press. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-674-39189-5.
  3. ^ a b c d Dehejia, Vidya. Indian Art. New York, NY: Phaidon Press Limited, 1997, p. 143
  4. ^ a b c d George Michell (1977). The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press. pp. 27 with Figure 5, 95–96. ISBN 978-0-226-53230-1.
  5. ^ Fred S. Kleiner (2010). Gardner's Art through the Ages: A Global History, Enhanced Edition. Cengage. p. 170. ISBN 978-1-4390-8578-3.
  6. ^ Rowland, Benjamin. The Art and Architecture of India. Kingsport, Tennessee: Kingsport Press, Inc., 1953 p. 224
  7. ^ Mitter, Partha. Indian Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 42
  8. ^ Dye, Joseph. The Arts of India. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. 2001. p. 112
  9. ^ The Iconography of the Vishnu Temple at Deogarh and the Vishnudharmottarapurana, Alexander Lubotsky, Ars Orientalis, Vol. 26, (1996), pp. 65-80
  10. ^ Meister, Michael W. (1974). "A Note on the Superstructure of the Marhia Temple". Artibus Asiae. 36 (1/2): 81–88. doi:10.2307/3249713. JSTOR 3249713.
  11. ^ Vincent Arthur Smith, Art of India. Parkstone International, 2012.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference vats1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).