The 14th century House of Worship: The Mallikarjun Mahadev Temple By Devyani Doshi

 I can never be thankful enough to SA for providing me a riverine flow of opportunities since the moment I joined. With the passage of time, it brought me the opportunity to make my childhood dream a reality. What is it, you ask? It was to cover a temple site!  But before actually diving into the magnificent details of the site cover, I would like to hark back in time!

I still remember, in 8th grade, when everyone else was recounting their future ambitions to the teacher, I stood up and replied in a unique fashion, “I want to become an Archaeologist”. Never did I imagine that my decision to choose Archaeology over everything else would turn out to be this MAGICAL! Temple Architecture had always been one of my major interests which pushed me up to take up Archaeology. Covering a temple site was always one of my dreams as I did visit a lot of temples in South India, but did not have any idea about how to cover a site! The day I joined SA and looked at their previous plethora of field work on covering the sites, I was so eagerly waiting to cover a site for SA under the guidance of our mentor Shriya Ma’am. Given that we all are in the midst of a pandemic, I would like to revamp my memory of  the day when I decided to go on a site after months of being stuck in. My visit to the Mallikarjun Mahadev Temple (which included a barrage of messages to Shriya Ma’am in order to get cognisance of all that it takes to cover a site). We had an unending extensive discussion mostly because of my uncontrollable curious nature to ask as many questions as possible. Within this course of dialogue on what all to do on a site, Shriya ma’am pointed out that you need to look at a site not as a mere tourist but through the perspective of an archaeologist, a conservator and a keen observer. Keeping in mind the phenomenal discussion that we had earlier in the day with respect to the angles of clicking photos on site, noticing and noting the damages, drafting a floor plan and so on, I went on being excited, nervous and carrying a lot of mixed feelings for covering the VERY FIRST SITE in my life! To quote Carl Sandburg- “Nothing happens unless you first dream” and so I never regret sleeping more. 

Jokes apart, starting off on a late afternoon of December 26, spotting a mob of deers along the roads of the Mayureshwar Sanctuary, and then making a way to extremely quiet roads of the village of Loni Bhapkar,  I saw the beautiful glimpse of the Bhumija Shikara of the Mallikarjun temple. 

 

Paving my way towards the temple premises, firstly my sight was caught by one of the rarest sculpture in the history of Temple Architecture,  the “Yadnyavaraha” which was the sole reason of me visiting this site. Unfortunately, lying afar from the temple in an isolated place, this particular varaha has a lot to talk about. The Yadnyavaraha here is defaced but still stands intact with numerous deities beautifully carved on its body, which probably might be Vishnu. It has a twisted tail and a defaced demon is seen coming out of it and then making its way to the bottom between the legs of the varaha seeking mercy. There are various motifs such as the conch and lotus on the legs with a completely ornamented body and a mud diya spotted near one of the legs indicating that this sculpture is worshipped even today. 

 

Getting the side view of the temple, I started walking towards the main temple. The temple site is located 90 kms to the southeast of Pune City, in taluka of Baramati. My father, who was with me on the journey, was as ebullient and enthusiastic as me and, he himself being a civil engineer, unprecedentedly turned out to be of great aid to draw the site plan. The temple premises, to my surprise, was extremely clean and well maintained, though this temple lies in one of the remotest parts of the region. The temple was predominantly made by the Yadavas in medieval period during the 14th century as the temple shows similar characteristics in terms of architecture of many temples in Western Maharashtra. The exterior of the temple is not at all ornamented. Climbing on to the steps of the temple through the cracked floor (the only damage to the site), I could finally now see the front view of the temple. Alas! The temple was being coloured on its front side along the main door of the temple. The temple has two entrances, one towards the north and one towards east. 

Making my way into the temple, I could see the sabhamandap (hallway), the garbhagriha (sanctum) and the Shivling straight from the door itself. The quiet walls of the temples highlighted the pillars of the Sabhamandap which depicted the scenes from Mahabharata and Ramayana intricately carved in stone. The Sabhamandap had a beautiful ceiling, probably a lotus upside down. The garbhagriha door is adorned with sculptures but most of these sculptures are now defaced, while some of them were broken from their hands, legs or upper body. The garbhagriha on its left side has a ruined sculpture of a female deity, which is unidentified, and a sculpture of Ganpati covered with sindoor or maybe an orange-red coloured pigment towards the right. The temple is dedicated to Shiva and has two shiva lingas mainly said to represent Shiv and Parvati, thus, lending the name to the site Mallikarjun.

The temple has one main shikara which is of bhumija type, made up of bricks and mortar. There are four more small shikaras around the main structure but are partially damaged, and one can notice collapsed bricks. The temple is on the verge of collapse from its west side and is inclined on one side presently. The temple has one nandi facing the temple and two more damaged ornamented nandis are seen lying nearby in the premises.

The temple has a pushkarni, located approximately 10 metres from its main entrance. The Pushkarini is decorated with beautiful round columns and opens its way to the Datta Mandir. Being astonished to see such a masterpiece in a well maintained state made me immensely happy. It made an indelible mark on my heart as I made my way back home after capturing the beautiful sights of this site. This site, though currently completely lost in between the quiet roads of the village, has a very important place, marking the typical architectural style of the Yadavas. This temple took me back to the Palasnath temple in the village of Palasdeo in Western Maharashtra, which is similar to it in terms of the architecture but lies in ruins now. Being an active temple, this site needs proper conservation and maintenance strategies considering it is still being used for worship. This sounds a bit complicated, isn't it? Let me break it down for you. The temple being worshipped opens its door to a lot of chemical reactions arising due to the materials like vermillion and milk which are used to worship the Shivling inside the temple. This particularly hampers the condition of the shrine worshipped there. However, I feel this particular structure is one of the most well maintained structures (inspite of not being an ASI protected site) I ever came across! I truly think that this was just possible due to the locals in the village who actually value this heritage site and make a constant effort to keep it well-preserved. 

And well, here I am ringing in 2021 with my debut as a blogger!