Hero Image

11th century Pratihara-era temple relics found by farmer digging field

Agra: A farmer in Nauni village of Jagner block, 70 km from Agra city, stumbled upon the relics of an 11th century Pratihara-era temple while he was digging a fish pond in his field. After he alerted the local authorities, district magistrate Prabhu N Singh ordered the area to be cordoned off and asked the Archaeological Survey of India officials to examine the finds.



R K Singh, ASI’s assistant superintendent for Agra, said, “We will send our team to Jagner to examine the relics and explore the site on Friday.

However, at first glance, the shared pictures of the discovered stones suggest that it’s part of Hindu temple probably belonging to 11th century.”

Speaking about the relics, professor Sugam Anand, head of the department of history and culture, Agra University, said, “Prima facie, it is a set of two amalakas made of sandstone. There is one lamp post as well, which is generally found at the entrance of a temple.”

An amalaka is a segmented or notched stone disk, usually with ridges on the rim, that sits on the top of a Hindu temple’s shikhara or main tower. According to one interpretation, the amalaka represents a lotus, and thus the symbolic seat for the deity below.

Professor Manvendra Kumar Pundhir, director of archaeological section at Aligarh Muslim University’s Centre of Advanced Study in History, said, “This would be the first discovery of a Pratihara-era temple structure across the Chambal river near Aravalli hill. Jagner is an area rich in sandstones and a waterbody near the discovery of the relics hints at the possibility of a large temple complex beneath the soil.”

He said, “A deeper study of the recovered relics will give us more details about the structure, such as whether the temple has mortise and tenon joints or not. In the Gupta period, the temples had a single room or garbha, but during the Pratihara era, it had extended to five rooms, including garbhagriha, mandap, bhog, like the Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya. We have abundant evidence of Pratihara temples in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena, Datia and Bhind, but this would be the first temple of the era here.”

READ ON APP