Bhojpur travel guide

Bhojpur is famous for its Siva temple, sometimes referred to as the ‘Somnath of the North’, and for its dams, a testimony to the crucial importance of irrigation water for agriculture in this region. Both the religious and civil functions implicit in these buildings owed their origin to the 11th-century Paramar king of Dhar, Raja Bhoj (1010-1053), who was noted not only as a great builder but also as a scholar.

Bhojeshwar Temple is a simple square with sides of just over 20 m. Surmounted by a corbelled dome, the lower doorposts are plain while the columns and upper sections inside are richly carved. Two ornamental figures guard the entrance. On a striking three-tiered sandstone platform over 6 m sq is a polished stone lingam 2.35 m high and nearly 6 m in circumference, the largest in India. The temple was never completed but the traditional medieval means of building the towering structures of great Hindu temples are still visible in the earth ramp, built as a temporary expedient to enable large stones to be raised to the height of the wall, yet in this case never cleared away. The gigantic patterns engraved on surrounding rocks, which are now protected by rails, suggest that the temple was part of a grand plan (note one depicting a Siva temple with pilgrims’ footprints). Equally interesting are over 1300 masons’ marks that appear on and around the temple which would have been erased on completion. Stone masons can be seen working on site.

There is a whitewashed Jain shrine nearby, behind a modern community centre, which encloses a 6-m-high black statue of a Tirthankara flanked by two smaller ones. The inscription on the pedestal uses 11th-century script. A caretaker holds the keys.

The huge lake that once lay to the west behind two massive stone and earth dams has now disappeared. Built between two hills, the Cyclopean dams were up to 100 m wide at the base and retained a lake of over 700 sq km, but in 1430 Hoshang Shah of Malwa demolished the dams. The Gonds believe that it took three years to drain, and that the local climate underwent a major change as a result of its drying out.