Bhima Devi Blog #4: Action Replay—Stumbling Upon Thakurdwara

April 21,2018

"You've got to be KIDDING ME!" I couldn't keep my voice down as the exact episode from our Rampur Jungi Adventure repeated itself before my eyes.

Here we were, in the middle of nowhere once again—this time 38 kms to the south-west of our site—outside what was definitely a modern temple located by the banks of a Taal(lake). Divyansh was beckoning me from the entrance of the temple, his face shining with the thrill of another discovery and I was staring at him in disbelief from the passenger seat of my uncle's car.

This time, Mayank happened to be on the site with us instead of Priyanshu—an out-of-season recruit, who found himself involuntarily dragged into the Preliminary Survey Team of the Bhima Devi Project, instead of being taught how to study Indus Valley Pottery like I had promised him.

I am sure the poor kid was baffled as a rooster confronted with a light bulb because in a single day, he had been dragged through three archaeological sites, unfed, unwatered and uncaffeinated while our enthusiasm got all the more fuelled by the growls of our empty stomachs and caffeine deprived brains. Unsure of what more we were going to subject him to after two ruined forts and an entire day of work at Bhima Devi, he followed us weakly—confused by the sudden whoop of his one day old mentor, who jumped up and threw her arms around his roommate, before the unlikely duo led him inside a pink and white temple with onion shaped domes.

My uncle, on the other hand, was unfazed. He had seen this happen one time too many. 

"Another one?" he asked, looking not even remotely surprised. "Well, go on, you two. I'll find some place we can grab a bite before you kill the poor new kid."

That, dear reader, is how we discovered the site of Thakurdwara, near Tikkar Taal in the Morni hills. 

Dedicated to Shiva—probably to Tripurantaka, judging by at least three Tripurantaka Sculptures, including one Sukansa(gavaksha), this site was a sister site to ours.

"You find these sculptures while tilling the land," a very drunk man, who became our self-appointed guide, told us, pointing at the terrace farms across and around the temple. "We, the villagers, used what we could to rebuild this temple with it."

That was true. They had used several Ghatpallava pillars in the new construction and had cemented the other sculptures on the boundary wall of the temple complex. 

"Do you know who built the temple?" Divyansh asked, turning on his charm in a minute, making me roll my eyes behind his back.

"It is said the Pandavas built it in their agyaatvaas," the man replied nonchalantly. "But don't they say that about everything we don't understand?"

I paused in my analysis of the fragmented Uma Maheshwar Sculpture that had my attention uptil now and reflected on it. Bhima Devi and nearly all its sister sites that we had surveyed so far, were indeed all accredited to the Pandavas.

"Chandravanshi Kshatriyas," I muttered thoughtfully, reciting under my breat the names of all the so called mythical lunar clan the scriptures listed that my tired, aching brain could recall. "Yayati, Bharata Muni, the Kurus, the Pandavas..."

I looked up at Divyansh.

"The Gurjara Pratiharas were Chandravanshi Rajputs," I said out loud.

"Yeah but they were half Brahmins, half Kshatriyas," he reminded me, referring to the Mandore inscription that we had just found in March.

"Yes, which meant that in the early Medieval times, if they wanted to rule—" I didn't finish my sentence but gave him a meaningful look.

"Is that an inscription?" Mayank's voice forced us to peel our attention from the drunk man and the thoughts he had stirred in our heads. We walked over to where Mayank was standing. On either side of the entrance of the new pink structure were two huge fragments with what was unmistakably-

"Brahmi?" Divyansh cocked up an eyebrow quizzically at me.

"Nah! Would have read it then. Proto Nagari. Probably early Sarda," I replied shrugging.

"Many people have tried to read it," the temple priest offered helpfully. "But nobody can tell us what it says. Is it Punjabi?"

"No, she could have read that,too," Divyansh replied nodding at me.  "Let's photograph it."

"You lot! Come and eat," my uncle called out from the roadside. 

"After you've eaten, I will need all of this photographed. Every inch of this," I told Divyansh urgently as we made our way out. 

"I'll map these, too.  I need to figure out where the route is going," he nodded seriously.

"Could there be more of these?" Mayank asked me as we sat down to three steaming bowls of Maggie and masala chai in a local dhaba  close by, our eyes still on the temple.

"There probably are many more," I replied. "But we are the only people losing sleep over them."

"Which is why, we aren't going to stop," Divyansh added, his eyes sparkling the way they had on the day of that planning workshop.

This project was far from over. It had only just begun! 

Parting Note: By means of these blogs, we have recorded all we had in our field notes and dig journals during the initial years of Survey. As this particular Memoir tells you this was only the beginning of several similar surveys and discoveries that eventually helped us make sense of Bhima Devi Temple, its architecture, its location, as well as the Dynasty who commissioned it. 

We won't be recording all those surveys and mappings because after a while, it will all lose novelty for you. There's only so much you can like about two Archaeologists, obsessed with mapping similar temples with almost identical local histories and their sense of satisfaction each time a new place was marked on the map. 

So, we will let the curtains fall here on the Bhima Devi Blog, choosing consciously to not talk about the late Pratihara temples of Kullu and Manali, that both Divyansh and I visited separately, a year apart, or the temple of Hathkoti in Upper Shimla, where once again, my uncle gladly accompanied me. There are also temples of  Masrur, Theog, Hanol, Kathua and Pehowa that don't feature in these blogs but were very much a part of our study. In all these covers, my uncle, Mr Navin Sharma, has been a source of unending support and encouragement. Shy and quiet by nature, he has always shied away from being in the hub of activity, but has covered more sites with us than anyone else in the survey team. While his name doesn't feature in the journal anywhere, we would have never discovered half these sites if it wasn't for his wanderlust and sense of adventure that I have thankfully inherited! This blog mentions him because he has modestly chosen to keep away from all other mentions but this Project could never have been possible without him!

Another person who has been invariably dragged and swallowed whole into the Bhima Devi Project, eversince his roommate decided to kill sleep for three people (including himself) on the fateful night he converted metric measurements to hastas and angulas,  is Mayank Singh. The Project in general and the three of us in particular have called on Mayank's services time and again for Toposheets, site surveys and sometimes to even fetch things for us. 

The Bhima Devi Project has been something I have given the best of my twenties to and hopefully, it has been worth everyone's while—my co-authors, my family, my mother who had to forcibly fast two days straight as we got this published, my co-editors and you, dear Reader, who may have the product of our labour and love in your hands and this blogpost before you.