Description0052423 Mrityunjaya group of temples, Dwarahat Uttarakhand 194.jpg
English: The Mritunjaya group, also spelled Mrityunjaya group, are the ruins of 10th to 11th century Shiva temples complex in Dwarahat. The complex consists of many ruins and one surviving Nagara-style Hindu temple with mandapa and design features found in central and east India. Near the standing temple are sections and foundations of missing temples. This site should not be confused with the Mrityunjaya group in Jageshwar Dham, which is also in Almora district.
Dwarahat is a historic site in Uttarakhand that served as a hub for pilgrims going to Panch Kedars, Panch Badris, Panch Prayags and other Hindu pilgrimage. The town has many groups of Hindu temples built and restored between the 8th and the 16th century. These temples are attributed to various Hindu kings and queens from different dynasties, particularly those from the Katyuri dynasty. Totaling about 55 Hindu temples, they are notable as central Himalayan temples with architecture from different parts of India.
For example, the Gujjar Deva group of Dwarahat shows the Maru-Gurjara architecture found in and near Gujarat – another testament to the flow of ideas across long distances in medieval India. The Dwarahat temples were reduced to ruins by Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughals. Dwarahat was again subject to pillage and desecration by Hafiz Khan and Bakshi Khan in mid 18th-century. Some were restored after the 15th century, and more recently in the 21st century by regional Hindu community and the ASI.
For scholarly sources on Dwarahat temples, see (1) Nachiket Chanchani (2019), Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas, University of Washington Press (2) Omacanda Handa and Madhu Jain (2009), Art and Architecture of Uttaranchal, Pentagon Press (3) Nachiket Chanchani (2014), From Asoda to Almora, The Roads Less Taken: Māru-Gurjara Architecture in the Central Himalayas, Arts Asiatiques, Tome 69, pp. 3-16
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse
Captions
Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents