Temples, tirthas, cities and sites
Each with its full history: when it was built, every attack, every rebuilding, and how it stands today.
ExcavatedBhimbetka Rock Shelters
Some 750 rock shelters in the Vindhya hills south of Bhopal, lived in from the Old Stone Age, with paintings of hunts, dances and animals laid down over thousands of years. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003.
ExcavatedMehrgarh
A farming village at the foot of the Bolan pass, lived in from c. 7000 BCE: among the oldest in South Asia, with barley and wheat, cattle and goats, mud-brick houses and the earliest known drilled teeth. It is the deep root of the Sindhu–Sarasvati cities.
ExcavatedKalibangan
A Harappan town on the dry bed of the Ghaggar, the river many identify with the Vedic Sarasvati, where B. B. Lal and B. K. Thapar found the oldest ploughed field yet excavated and rows of fire altars.
ExcavatedHarappa
The city on the old course of the Ravi that gave the whole civilisation its first name. Railway builders carried off its bricks in 1856; the excavations of 1921 showed what had been lost.
RebuiltBhalka Tirth, Veraval
The place near Somnath where the hunter Jara’s arrow struck Shri Krishna’s foot as he rested under a peepal tree, and from where he departed for his own dham. By tradition this marks the beginning of Kali Yuga.
ExcavatedDholavira
A Harappan city on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch, famous for its stone-cut reservoirs and a signboard of ten large Indus letters. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
ExcavatedChanhudaro
A small Harappan town on the old Indus plain south of Mohenjo-daro, with no citadel but whole workshops for beads, seals and shell. Its craftsmen drilled the long carnelian beads that were traded as far as Mesopotamia.
ExcavatedRakhigarhi
The largest Sindhu–Sarasvati city found in India, in the old Drishadvati basin of Hisar district. A genome from its cemetery, published in 2019, showed the people of the cities carried no steppe ancestry.
ExcavatedMohenjo-daro
The largest city of the Sindhu–Sarasvati civilisation, on the Sindhu in Sindh, with its Great Bath, its grid of baked-brick streets and covered drains. The bronze dancing girl and the yogi seal many see as Pashupati were found here.
ExcavatedBanawali
A walled town on the dry bed of the Sarasvati in Haryana, excavated by R. S. Bisht in the 1970s, with streets that run at angles rather than a strict grid, fire altars, and a clay model of a plough.
ExcavatedLothal
A Harappan port town near the Gulf of Khambhat, excavated by S. R. Rao in 1955–60, with a brick basin that he identified as the oldest known dockyard in the world.
ExcavatedShortugai
The farthest north of all known Harappan settlements, on the Amu Darya near the Kokcha, hundreds of kilometres from the Sindhu. It was set up to reach the lapis lazuli of Badakhshan.
ExcavatedSinauli
A burial ground in Baghpat district, between the Yamuna and the Hindon, where the Archaeological Survey found chariots, swords and a helmet in royal graves of around 2000–1800 BCE.
ExcavatedHastinapura
The capital of the Kuru kings, where Bhishma took his vow and the dice game was played. The Puranas say the Ganga swept it away and Nichakshu moved to Kaushambi; B. B. Lal’s excavation found a flood layer in the right place.
ExcavatedAdichanallur
A vast field of burial urns on the Tamirabarani river, with iron tools, bronze ornaments and gold diadems. It was the first site in the south to be dug, in the 1870s, and is still yielding finds.
ExcavatedTakshashila (Taxila)
The great city of learning of Gandhara, where Chanakya taught, Jivaka studied medicine and, says the Mahabharata, Vaishampayana first recited the Bharata to Janamejaya. Its three excavated cities, Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh, lie outside Rawalpindi.
ExcavatedKaushambi
The capital of the Vatsas on the Yamuna, where the Puranas say the Kuru king Nichakshu moved after Hastinapura was swept away. King Udayana ruled here, the Buddha stayed in its monasteries, and Ashoka addressed an edict to its officers.
ExcavatedChampa (Champapuri), capital of Anga
The river capital of Anga at the meeting of the Champa and the Ganga, west of Bhagalpur, one of the six great cities of the Buddha’s day, taken by Bimbisara for Magadha. Jains honour it as the birthplace and nirvana place of the twelfth Tirthankara, Vasupujya.
ExcavatedVaishali
The capital of the Licchavis, the most famous of the ganas, the republics of ancient Bharat. The Jain scriptures place Bhagwan Mahavira’s birth in its suburb Kundagrama, and the Buddha preached here often.
ExcavatedKeezhadi excavations
A brick-built town on the Vaigai, 12 km from Madurai, where potsherds scratched with Tamil-Brahmi names have been dated to the 6th century BCE. It moved the start of urban life and writing in the Tamil country back by centuries.
RuinedRajgir (Rajagriha)
The ring of five hills that was Magadha’s first capital: Jarasandha’s Girivraja in the Mahabharata, Bimbisara’s Rajagriha, and a place equally holy to Buddhists and Jains. Its stone walls run for some 40 km over the hills.
ExcavatedKushinagar
Kusinara of the Mallas, where the Buddha passed into Mahaparinirvana between two sal trees and was cremated at the Makutabandhana shrine, the mound now called Ramabhar. A 5th-century reclining Buddha, found in 1876, lies in the temple over the spot.
StandingPawapuri (Pavapuri)
The place where, by Jain tradition, Bhagwan Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, gave his last sermon and attained nirvana in 527 BCE. The white Jal Mandir stands in the middle of a lotus tank, reached by a long causeway.
ExcavatedShravasti (Saheth-Maheth)
The capital of Kosala on the Rapti, which the Ramayana gives to Lava, son of Shri Rama, where the Buddha spent more rainy seasons than anywhere else, and which Jains honour as the birthplace of Sambhavanath. Its ruins are the twin mounds of Saheth and Maheth.
ExcavatedPataliputra
Capital of Magadha, of the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas, on the Ganga where the Son once joined it. Under modern Patna lie the timber palisade Megasthenes described and the pillared hall of the Mauryas.
RuinedAnuradhapura
The capital of Lanka for some fourteen centuries, with its giant stupas and the Bodhi tree grown from a cutting brought from Bodh Gaya in Ashoka’s time. Chola armies under Rajaraja I took and sacked it in the 990s, and the capital moved to Polonnaruwa.
StandingJunagadh and Uparkot
The old city at the foot of Girnar, whose citadel of Uparkot goes back to the Mauryas and whose rock carries the records of Ashoka, Rudradaman and Skandagupta. Capital of the Chudasamas, home of Narsinh Mehta, it was the princely state whose Nawab tried to join Pakistan in 1947.
RuinedPoompuhar (Kaveripattinam)
Puhar, where the Kaveri meets the sea, was the port-capital of the early Cholas, the city of Kovalan and Kannagi in the Silappatikaram. The Manimekalai says the sea swallowed it, and traces of its wharves lie on the shore and under the water.
ExcavatedSisupalgarh
The square earthen ramparts of an early city on the edge of Bhubaneswar, with eight gateways and a group of standing stone pillars at the centre. Many scholars identify it with Kalinganagari, the capital of Kharavela.
StandingMadurai, city of the Sangam
The Pandya capital on the Vaigai, home of the third Tamil Sangam, the assembly of poets whose work became Tamil’s classical canon. Megasthenes heard of its pearl-rich kingdom in Pataliputra.
ExcavatedKodumanal
A Sangam-age industrial town on the Noyyal, near Erode, where beads of beryl, sapphire and carnelian were cut and iron and steel smelted. The Sangam poem Pathitrupathu names it Kodumanam.
StandingBarabar and Nagarjuni Caves
The oldest rock-cut caves in Bharat, hollowed out of solid granite and polished to a mirror finish, which Ashoka and Dasharatha gave to the Ajivika ascetics.
StandingDhauli
A low hill on the Daya river south of Bhubaneswar, in the land Ashoka conquered in the Kalinga war. On its rock he cut his edicts, with two special edicts for Kalinga that tell his officers that all men are his children; above them the forepart of an elephant emerges from the stone.
StandingGirnar
The holy mountain over Junagadh, climbed by some ten thousand steps to the padukas of Guru Dattatreya, sacred to Jains as the place where Neminath attained moksha. At its foot a single boulder carries Ashoka’s edicts, Rudradaman’s and Skandagupta’s records of the Sudarshana lake.
ExcavatedSarnath
The deer park of Rishipatana near Kashi where the Buddha gave his first sermon. Ashoka’s lion capital from here became the national emblem of India in 1950.
StandingSanchi
The Buddhist hill of Sanchi, a few km from Vidisha, with the Great Stupa begun by Ashoka and four carved gateways of the 1st century BCE. It is the most complete early Buddhist site in Bharat.
ExcavatedLumbini
The grove in the Terai where Queen Mayadevi gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama. Ashoka came here in the twentieth year of his reign and set up a pillar recording the birth, which still stands.
StandingVidisha (Besnagar)
The old city on the Betwa where a Greek envoy raised a Garuda pillar to Vasudeva around 113 BCE, with Sanchi and the Udayagiri caves in sight. Its great Paramara temple, the Vijaya Mandir, was pulled down on Aurangzeb’s orders in 1682.
ExcavatedArikamedu
A port on the Ariyankuppam river south of Puducherry that traded with the Roman world. Roman wine jars and Italian red-glazed pottery found here gave Indian archaeology one of its first firm date anchors.
ExcavatedAmaravati (Dhanyakataka) and the Mahachaitya
Dhanyakataka on the Krishna, a Satavahana royal city whose great stupa produced some of the finest stone carving of ancient India. Beside it stands the Amareswara temple, one of the five Pancharama shrines of Shiva.
StandingAjanta Caves
About thirty Buddhist caves cut into a horseshoe gorge of the Waghora river, with the finest surviving paintings of ancient India. Forgotten under jungle, they were seen again by a British hunting party in 1819.
ExcavatedBharhut Stupa
A Buddhist stupa in Satna district whose carved railing, with the names of every scene cut beside it, is the oldest labelled picture-book in Indian art. The stupa itself is gone; most of the railing is in the Indian Museum, Kolkata.
StandingUdayagiri and Khandagiri Caves
Twin hills outside Bhubaneswar cut with rock dwellings for Jain munis by Kharavela, the Chedi king of Kalinga, whose Hathigumpha inscription is the fullest record of any Indian king of his time.
StandingNaneghat
A pass on the old trade road from the Konkan ports up to Junnar, with a cave at its head where the Satavahana queen Naganika had her husband’s Vedic sacrifices carved in stone. A stone jar at the top is still shown as the place where tolls were collected.
StandingPandavleni Caves, Nashik
Twenty-four Buddhist caves cut into the Trirashmi hill above Nashik, whose inscriptions are the main record of the Satavahana kings. Cave 3 carries Queen Gautami Balashri’s praise of her son Gautamiputra Satakarni, who drove out the Shakas.
StandingUraiyur
The inland capital of the early Chola kings of the Sangam poems, now a quarter of Tiruchirappalli. Ptolemy knew it as Orthoura, and its temples include the birthplace of Tiruppan Alvar.
ExcavatedMuziris (Pattanam)
The Chera port of Muciri, where Roman ships came for pepper. Its probable site at Pattanam, near Kodungallur, has yielded amphorae, Tamil-Brahmi sherds and a timber wharf.
StandingPaithan (Pratishthana)
Pratishthana on the Godavari, capital of the Satavahanas and one of the great cities of the ancient Deccan, later the home of Sant Eknath. Its silk sarees still carry its name.
ExcavatedDebal (Banbhore)
The sea port of Raja Dahir’s Sindh, whose great temple flag was brought down by a catapult when Muhammad bin Qasim stormed it in 711–712. It is widely identified with the excavated walled town of Banbhore, near Karachi.
StandingKarla Caves and Ekvira Devi
The largest rock-cut chaitya hall in India, cut on the old trade road from the Konkan ports to the Deccan. At its mouth stands the temple of Ekvira Devi, kuldevi of the Koli fisherfolk and many Maharashtrian families.
StandingAzhagiya Manavalar Temple, Thirukkozhi (Uraiyur)
The second Divya Desam, in the old Chola capital of Uraiyur, where Bhagwan Ranganatha came as the beautiful bridegroom for Kamalavalli, the Chola king’s daughter. Here the Thayar goes first in every procession and the Perumal follows.
StandingPurushottama Perumal Temple, Thirukkarambanur (Uthamar Kovil)
A temple near Srirangam where Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva are all worshipped inside one wall. Lakshmi filled Shiva’s begging bowl here, and so she is Poornavalli, the one who filled it.
StandingPundarikakshan Perumal Temple, Thiruvellarai
A hill temple of white rock 27 km from Tiruchirappalli, older in local reckoning than Srirangam itself. Its two gates open by turns, one for Uttarayana and one for Dakshinayana, and its Pallava svastika well still holds water.
StandingVadivazhagiya Nambi (Sundararaja Perumal) Temple, Anbil
A reclining Perumal on the north bank of the Kollidam, 25 km from Tiruchirappalli, in the village of Anbil, home of the Chola minister Anirudha Brahmarayar. Thirumazhisai Alvar names it among the seven places where the Lord lies on the serpent.
StandingAppakkudathan Perumal Temple, Thirupper Nagar (Koviladi)
One of the Pancharanga Kshetrams on the Kaveri, where the Lord ate a whole pot of appam to free a cursed king. Neyyappam is still offered every night, and Nammalvar is held to have sung his last pasuram here.
StandingHara Saba Vimochana Perumal Temple, Thirukkandiyur
The Perumal who freed Hara, Shiva himself, from the skull of Brahma that clung to his hand. Kandiyur stands between Thanjavur and Thiruvaiyaru, with the Shiva temple of the same katha close by.
StandingJagatrakshaka Perumal Temple, Thirukkoodalur (Aduthurai)
Vaiyam Katha Perumal, the Lord who saved the world: here, the temple holds, Varaha entered the earth to bring Bhudevi back. The village of Vadakurangaduthurai lies between Kumbakonam and Thiruvaiyaru.
StandingGajendra Varadar Temple, Thirukkavithalam (Kapisthalam)
The place of Gajendra Moksha on the Kaveri, where the Lord came for an elephant’s cry of ‘Adimulam’. Hanuman also worshipped here, and so the village is Kapisthalam, the place of the kapi.
StandingValvil Raman Temple, Thiruppullam Boothangudi
Where Shri Rama performed the last rites of Jatayu, the eagle who fought Ravana for Sita. Here alone Rama lies down, and he has four arms.
StandingAndalakkum Aiyan Temple, Thiru Adhanur
The Lord who measured out wages to workers in sand, which turned to gems for the honest. He reclines with the measure as his pillow, near Swamimalai.
StandingThirunaraiyur Nambi Temple, Nachiyar Koil
The temple named for the Thayar: Vishnu agreed to Maharshi Medhavi’s condition that his daughter would always go first. Thirumangai Alvar received his initiation here and sang it in more than a hundred pasurams, and its stone Garuda grows heavier as he leaves the temple.
StandingSaranathar Temple, Thirucherai
Sara Kshetram, where Brahma made his pot for the Vedas from the earth of this place, and where Kaveri was granted equal glory with Ganga. Saranathan is seen here with five consorts, and Kaveri has her own shrine.
StandingBhaktavatsala Perumal Temple, Thirukkannamangai
Lakshmi Vanam near Tiruvarur, where Lakshmi did tapas to wed Vishnu after the churning of the ocean. One of the Pancha Krishnaranya Kshetrams, with one of the largest temple tanks in Tamil Nadu and a beehive the devotees honour as the devas.
StandingSowriraja Perumal (Neelamegha) Temple, Thirukkannapuram
Bhuloka Vaikuntham: the most sung of all Divya Desams after Srirangam, praised by five Alvars in 128 pasurams. The festival Perumal wears a sowri, a lock of hair, after he grew one to save his priest.
StandingLokanatha Perumal Temple, Thirukkannangudi
One of the Pancha Krishnaranya Kshetrams near Nagapattinam, where the child Krishna, chased by Vasishtha for eating his butter image, was held by the sages’ love.
StandingSoundararaja Perumal Temple, Thirunagai (Nagapattinam)
The Lord of the port town, so beautiful he was named Soundararajan. Adisesha worshipped him here and gave Nagapattinam its name, and Thirumangai Alvar sang to him as a girl in love.
StandingThanjai Mamanikoil (Neelamegha, Manikundra and Veera Narasimha Perumal), Thanjavur
Three small temples on the Vennar, a short walk apart, that the Alvars praised as one: Mamanikoil, Manikundram and Thanjaiyali Nagar. The katha of the asura Tanjakan gives Thanjavur its name.
StandingJagannatha Perumal Temple, Thirunandipura Vinnagaram (Nathan Koil)
Nandipuram, where Shiva’s Nandi was healed of a curse by worshipping Vishnu; Nandi sits in the sanctum of this Vishnu temple. Here too Lakshmi did tapas for a place on the Lord’s chest.
StandingKolavilli Raman Temple, Thiruvelliyangudi
The temple Maya built to match Vaikuntha, where Shukracharya, blinded at Vamana’s gift, did tapas for his eye. A lamp called the Netra Deepam is kept burning for him.
StandingDevadirajan (Amaruviappan) Temple, Thiruvazhundur (Therazhundur)
The village where a king’s flying chariot sank to the ground, and where Krishna is the cowherd lord surrounded by his cattle. Kamban, poet of the Tamil Ramayana, was born here.
StandingSthalasayana (Kripasamudra) Perumal Temple, Thirusirupuliyur
Small tiger-place: the Perumal lies here in a little form for the aged sages Vyaghrapada and Patanjali, and faces south as at Srirangam. Garuda, the temple holds, does not fly over it.
StandingNanmathiya Perumal Temple, Thalaichanga Nanmathiyam (Thalaichangadu)
The Perumal who lifted Chandra’s curse, and wears a crescent on his head as Shiva does. The village near Poompuhar was known for its conches, and the Lord here holds one of rare beauty.
StandingParimala Ranganatha Perumal Temple, Thiruvindalur (Mayiladuthurai)
One of the Pancharanga Kshetrams, on the Kaveri at Mayiladuthurai. Here the Lord gave fragrance back to the Vedas, freed Chandra, and lies with Kaveri at his head and Ganga at his feet.
StandingGopalakrishna Perumal Temple, Thirukkavalampadi (Thirunangur)
One of the eleven Vishnu temples of Thirunangur, which the temple katha says appeared when Vishnu took eleven forms to calm Shiva’s grief-filled dance. Here Krishna is the lord of a garden that matched Indra’s.
StandingThadalan (Trivikrama) Temple, Thirukkazhicheerama Vinnagaram, Sirkazhi
Thadalan, the Lord of the long stride, in Sirkazhi: Trivikrama with his left foot lifted to the sky. Sage Romasa was given a lifespan here that outlasts Brahma’s.
StandingKudamadukoothan Temple, Thiru Arimeya Vinnagaram (Thirunangur)
Krishna the pot-dancer: Thirumangai Alvar named the Lord of this Nangur temple Kudamadukoothan for the kudakkoothu, the dance with pots that Krishna danced in Dvaraka.
StandingPurushottama Perumal Temple, Thiru Vanpurushothamam (Thirunangur)
A single-shrine temple of Thirunangur where, the temple katha says, the Lord brought the Ocean of Milk for the hungry child Upamanyu.
StandingHemaranganathar Temple, Thiru Semponsei Koil (Thirunangur)
The temple made of red gold: Shri Rama, returning from Lanka, gave a golden cow to a brahmin here, and the brahmin built the shrine with it.
StandingNarayana Perumal Temple, Thiru Manimada Koil (Thirunangur)
The largest of the Thirunangur temples, where all the Perumals of Nangur gather each Thai for the Garuda Sevai. Sunlight enters through openings in the gopuram to reach the Lord, worshipped by Surya the year round.
StandingVaikunthanatha Perumal Temple, Thiru Vaikunda Vinnagaram (Thirunangur)
Vaikuntha on earth among the Nangur fields: the Lord sits here as he sits in his own abode, as he showed himself to the sage Uthanka and King Uparichara Vasu.
StandingThiruvali–Thirunagari (Lakshmi Narasimhar and Vedarajan Temples)
The birthplace of Thirumangai Alvar and the home of his wife Kumudavalli: two temples that the Alvar always sang together, in over forty pasurams. At Thirunagari the flag post faces the Alvar’s shrine, not the Lord’s.
StandingDeivanayaka Perumal Temple, Thiru Thevanar Thogai (Thirunangur)
The assembly of the devas: thogai means a gathering, and here the devas gathered to worship the Lord of the gods, with Lakshmi as the daughter of the sea.
StandingPallikonda Perumal (Lakshmiranganathar) Temple, Thiru Thetriyambalam (Thirunangur)
The reclining Lord of Thirunangur: Ranganatha of Srirangam, the temple katha says, came here at Shiva’s request when the eleven forms were taken, and Adisesha worshipped him.
StandingVaradaraja Perumal Temple, Thiru Manikkoodam (Thirunangur)
Varadaraja of Thirunangur, worshipped, the temple katha says, by the eleven Rudras and by Indra. A small single-shrine temple among the fields.
StandingAnnan Perumal (Srinivasa) Temple, Thiru Vellakkulam (Thirunangur)
The Southern Tirupati: Srinivasa of Thiruvellakkulam, whom devotees call Annan, the elder brother of the Lord of the seven hills. Thirumangai Alvar’s wife Kumudavalli was found here.
StandingThamaraiyal Kelvan Temple, Thiruparthanpalli
Partha’s school: here, the Padma Purana katha says, Krishna gave Arjuna a sword to strike water from the earth, and taught him who he really was. Arjuna stands in the temple with the sword.
StandingDevanatha Perumal Temple, Thiruvahindrapuram (Thiruvanthipuram)
The Lord of the devas on the Gadilam river, where Adisesha dug a well for the Lord’s abhisheka, and where Vedanta Desika lived and wrote for some forty years. Hayagriva sits on the hill above.
StandingUlagalantha (Trivikrama) Perumal Temple, Thirukkovalur (Tirukkoyilur)
The birthplace of the Prabandham: on a rainy night in a narrow passage here the three first Alvars felt a fourth press among them, and lit the first three Thiruvandhadhis as lamps to see him. Trivikrama stands here in wood under one of the tallest gopurams in Tamil Nadu.
StandingAdikesava Perumal (Ashtabhuja) Temple, Ashtabhujakaram, Kanchipuram
The eight-armed Lord of Vishnu Kanchi, who took eight weapons to protect Brahma’s yajna from the serpent Saraswati sent against it. Pey Alvar and Thirumangai Alvar sing of him, and Vedanta Desika wrote his Ashtabhujashtakam here.
StandingDeepaprakasar (Vilakkoli Perumal) Temple, Thiruthanka (Thooppul), Kanchipuram
The Lord who came as the light of a lamp when darkness was sent against Brahma’s yajna. Thooppul is the birthplace of Vedanta Desika, who has a shrine here with Hayagriva.
StandingAzhagiya Singar (Narasimha) Temple, Thiruvelukkai, Kanchipuram
The place where the Lord desired to stay: Narasimha of Vishnu Kanchi, who came as Narahari to guard Brahma’s yajna. Vedanta Desika’s Kamasikashtakam is in his praise.
StandingPandava Thoothar Perumal Temple, Thiruppadagam (Kanchipuram)
Shri Krishna sits here twenty-five feet tall, as he showed himself in the Kaurava court when he came as the Pandavas’ envoy. It is one of the three oldest Vishnu temples of Kanchipuram and the 48th Divya Desam.
StandingYathothkari Perumal Temple, Thiruvekka (Kanchipuram)
The Lord who did as he was told. When Thirumalisai Alvar left Kanchi and asked Bhagwan to roll up his serpent bed and follow, he did, and came back when the Alvar returned. Poigai Alvar was born in the lotus tank of this temple.
StandingPavalavannar Perumal Temple, Thiruppavalavannam (Kanchipuram)
A west-facing temple in Kanchi where Vishnu is the colour of coral. Across the road stands his twin, Pachaivannar, the green Lord, and devotees visit the two together.
StandingVijayaraghava Perumal Temple, Thiruputkuzhi
Here Shri Rama performed the last rites of Jatayu, the vulture king who fell fighting Ravana. Pul is a bird, kuzhi a pit: the name of the village is the grave of Jatayu.
StandingBhaktavatsala Perumal Temple, Thirunindravur
Lakshmi stopped here and stayed, so the town is Thiru-nindra-ur, where Shri stood. Thirumangai Alvar walked past without singing, and the Lord himself went after him for a verse.
StandingNeervanna Perumal Temple, Thiruneermalai
A hill once ringed by water, Toyadri. Thirumangai Alvar waited six months for the flood to go down before he could climb it, and he found Bhagwan here in all four of his postures: standing, lying, sitting and striding.
StandingNithyakalyana Perumal Temple, Thiruvidanthai
Varaha, who lifted the earth from the waters, holds Bhudevi on his lap here, and the temple says he weds a bride every day: Nithya-kalyana, the daily wedding. Couples come to pray for marriage.
RebuiltSthalasayana Perumal Temple, Thirukkadalmallai (Mamallapuram)
At Mamallapuram Vishnu lies on the ground itself, with no serpent bed, because he lay down where a tired sage left him. Bhoothath Alvar, one of the first three Alvars, was born here.
StandingYoga Narasimha Temple, Thirukkadigai (Sholinghur)
A ghatika is twenty-four minutes, and the temple says that one ghatika on this hill is worth a lifetime of prayer elsewhere. Narasimha sits here in yoga at the top of 1,305 steps, and Hanuman faces him from the smaller hill.
RebuiltNavamukunda Temple, Thirunavaya
Nine yogis installed nine images here and eight sank into the earth; the ninth sank to its knees and was held. That ninth is Navamukunda. On the sands below, the Zamorins of Calicut held the Mamankam festival every twelve years.
StandingUyyavandha Perumal Temple, Thiruvithuvakkodu (Thirumittacode)
Five deities share one compound on the Bharathapuzha: four forms of Vishnu said to have been installed by the Pandavas, and Mahadev. Kulasekhara Alvar, the Chera king who became a saint, gave this shrine one of his most loved decads.
StandingThrikkakara Vamanamoorthy Temple (Thirukkatkarai)
Kerala holds that Mahabali’s capital stood here, and that Onam began at this temple. The image shows Vamana about to set his foot on Bali’s head.
StandingLakshmana Perumal Temple, Thirumoozhikkulam
Tiru-mozhi-kalam, the place where sacred words were spoken. Here Lakshmana and Bharata made peace, and here the sage Harita received Bhagwan’s counsel for the age of Kali. It is the Lakshmana temple of Kerala’s Nalambalam pilgrimage.
StandingSreevallabha Temple, Thiruvalla (Thiruvallavazh)
One of the largest temple compounds of Kerala, where Kathakali is performed as an offering almost every night. The Lord came here as a young brahmachari to kill the asura Thukalasura for a devout old woman.
StandingThrikkodithanam Mahavishnu Temple (Thirukkadithanam)
The temple of Sahadeva, youngest of the Pandavas, one of the five Pandava temples of the Pamba country. A stone figure by the pond is the servant who kept devotees waiting at a closed door.
StandingThrichittatt Mahavishnu Temple, Chengannur (Thiruchengundrur)
Yudhishthira’s temple among the five of the Pandavas. The temple says he came here to atone for the one half-truth of his life, spoken at Kurukshetra to bring down Drona.
StandingMayapiran Temple, Thiruppuliyur
Bhima’s temple among the five of the Pandavas, large as befits the strongest brother. The Saptarishis are said to have won moksha here after refusing a king’s gold.
StandingPambanaiyappan Temple, Thiruvanvandoor
Nakula’s temple among the five of the Pandavas, near the Pamba. Nammalvar’s whole decad on it is recited here in a festival that runs for weeks.
StandingAdikesava Perumal Temple, Thiruvattar
Three rivers wind round this temple, and the Lord inside lies so long that you see him through three doors: face, body, feet. Devotees call it older than the Padmanabhaswamy temple, and the Thiruvananthapuram shrine is said to follow its plan.
StandingThiruvazhmarban Temple, Thiruppathisaram (Thiruvanparisaram)
The Lord here has no separate Thayar shrine, for Lakshmi lives on his chest: Thiru-vazh-marban, he in whose heart Shri dwells. It was the home of Udaya Nangai, mother of Nammalvar.
StandingVaikuntanathar (Kallapiran) Temple, Srivaikuntam
First of the Nava Tirupati, the nine Vishnu temples of the Thamirabarani that Nammalvar sang. The festival image is Kallapiran, the Lord of the thief, because he once stood by a robber who prayed to him.
StandingVijayasana Perumal Temple, Thiruvaragunamangai (Natham)
Second of the Nava Tirupati, two kilometres from Srivaikuntam, where Vishnu sits as the victor. The Navagraha reckoning makes it the temple of Chandra.
StandingKaichina Vendhan Temple, Thiruppuliangudi
Third of the Nava Tirupati, where Vishnu reclines with a lotus stalk rising from his navel to Brahma. He is Bhoomipalar, protector of the earth, for here he coaxed Bhudevi back from the netherworld. The Navagraha reckoning makes it the temple of Budha.
StandingIrattai Tirupati, Thirutholaivillimangalam
Two temples side by side counted as one Divya Desam: Devapiran and Aravindalochanar. The name comes from a balance (tula) and a bow (vil) that a sage turned up with his plough.
StandingMayakoothar Temple, Thirukkulandai (Perungulam)
The Lord who danced on an asura’s head to free a devotee’s wife. Perungulam takes its name from its great tank, and the Navagraha reckoning makes the temple Shani’s.
StandingVaithamanidhi Perumal Temple, Thirukkolur
The Lord who keeps the treasure: he lies with a grain measure under his head and watches the palm of his hand, guarding Kubera’s wealth. Madhurakavi Alvar, who gave his life to Nammalvar, was born here.
StandingMakara Nedunkuzhaikathar Temple, Thenthiruperai (Thirupperai)
The Lord with the long fish-shaped earrings, a gift from Bhudevi who found them in the river. Seventh of the Nava Tirupati, and Shukra’s temple in the Navagraha reckoning.
StandingNinra Narayana Perumal Temple, Thiruthangal
Ranganatha of Srirangam, on his way to wed Andal at Srivilliputhur, stopped here for the night: tangal, the halt. The temple stands on a low granite hill beside a Shiva temple.
StandingKalamegha Perumal Temple, Thirumohur
Mohanapuram: the temple says that here Vishnu took the form of Mohini at the churning of the ocean and kept the amrita from the asuras. Its Sudarshana shrine draws devotees from across the south.
StandingSowmya Narayana Perumal Temple, Thirukoshtiyur
From the tower of this temple Ramanuja called out the eight-syllable mantra, Om Namo Narayanaya, to everyone in the street, after his guru had made him come eighteen times to learn it.
StandingAdi Jagannatha Perumal Temple, Thiruppullani
Here Shri Rama lay on darbha grass for three days, asking the Ocean for a way to Lanka. Pul is grass and anai a pillow: Thiruppullani. Childless couples come to pray, for the temple links Dasharatha’s payasam to this Lord.
StandingSathyamurthi Perumal Temple, Thirumeyyam (Thirumayam)
Under the hill fort of Thirumayam, Vishnu reclines in a cave cut into the living rock, one of the largest such images in the south. Beside it, in the same hill, is a cave of Mahadev.
StandingGokul (Thiruvaippadi)
The cowherd village across the Yamuna where Vasudeva carried the newborn Krishna on the night of his birth. The Alvars called it Thiruvaippadi, the holy settlement of the herdsmen, and Andal and Periyalvar sang it as if they lived there.
StandingShiv Khori Cave, Reasi
A long cave in the hills near Ransoo in Reasi district, where a swayambhu linga about four feet high rises from the floor and water drips on it from the roof. After Vaishno Devi it is the most visited shrine of the Jammu hills.
StandingSudh Mahadev, Chenani
A Shiva temple in the hills beyond Patnitop, where pieces of a great trishul are kept and worshipped. The Shravan Purnima mela here is one of the oldest fairs of the Jammu hills.
StandingBijli Mahadev, Kullu
A wooden Shiva temple on a ridge at about 2,460 m above the meeting of the Beas and Parvati rivers. Lightning, the temple’s tradition says, strikes its tall staff and shatters the linga, and the priest joins it again with butter.
StandingBaba Balak Nath Temple, Deotsidh
The cave of Baba Balak Nath on the Chakmoh hill, the most visited shrine of the lower Himachal hills and of Hindu Punjab. Devotees offer rot, a sweet thick bread, and call out Jai Baba Balak Nath.
RebuiltSthaneshwar Mahadev Temple, Thanesar
The Shiva temple of Sthanu, the Lord who stands firm, from whom Sthanvishvara, the capital of Harsha, took its name. The tradition of Kurukshetra says the Pandavas worshipped here before the war.
StandingSheetla Mata Mandir, Gurugram
The temple that gave old Gurgaon its place on the pilgrim map: Sheetla Mata, whom the people of Gurugram honour as Kripi, wife of Dronacharya, the guru of the Kauravas and Pandavas. Its Chaitra mela draws lakhs, and here many families give their children their first haircut.
StandingJhandewalan Devi Mandir, Delhi
A Devi temple between Karol Bagh and Paharganj, named for the great flag that was raised when a murti of the Devi was found in the ground here. The old murti is still worshipped in the cave below.
RebuiltNavagraha Temple, Guwahati
A temple of the nine planets on Chitrachal hill in Guwahati, where nine lingas, each draped in its graha’s colour, sit around a central linga of Surya. Old Guwahati was Pragjyotishpura, the city of eastern light and of astronomy.
RebuiltMahabhairav Temple, Tezpur
The Shiva temple on a hillock in Tezpur, the old Shonitpura of Banasura, the asura king devoted to Shiva whose daughter Usha married Krishna’s grandson Aniruddha.
RebuiltDoul Govinda Temple, North Guwahati
The Krishna temple at the foot of Chandrabharati hill on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, opposite Guwahati, famous for its five-day Doul, the Holi of Assam.
StandingChaturdasha Devata Temple, Old Agartala
The royal temple of the Fourteen Gods at Old Agartala, the family deities of the Manikya kings and of the Tripuri people, worshipped as fourteen heads of metal. Its Kharchi Puja in July is the great festival of Tripura.
StandingKirateshwar Mahadev Temple, Legship
The Shiva temple on the bank of the Rangeet at Legship in west Sikkim, where tradition places Arjuna’s tapas and his fight with Shiva disguised as a Kirata hunter.
StandingGosaikunda
A high lake in the Langtang mountains that Nepali tradition holds Mahadev made with his trishul after drinking the poison of the churning of the ocean. On Janai Purnima thousands climb to bathe in it.
StandingKataragama (Kathirkamam)
The jungle shrine of Murugan in the far south-east of Lanka, on the Menik Ganga, where he is said to have met and wed Valli. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and the Vedda people all come here, and Tamil pilgrims once walked to it for weeks from Jaffna.
RebuiltNaguleswaram Temple, Keerimalai
The northernmost of the five ancient Ishwarams of Shiva in Lanka, beside the Keerimalai springs on the Jaffna coast. Jaffna’s Hindus come here on Aadi Amavasai to offer tarpanam for their ancestors and bathe in the springs.
StandingShri Panchmukhi Hanuman Mandir, Karachi
Karachi’s oldest Hindu shrine by its own tradition, built over a murti of five-faced Hanuman that was found in the ground. It is protected under Sindh’s heritage law, and work to restore it in 2019 brought up older murtis buried in its grounds.
StandingNeelkanth Mahadev Temple, near Rishikesh
The forest shrine where, the temple’s tradition says, Mahadev sat in meditation after drinking the halahala poison of the Samudra Manthan. It stands where the Pankaja and Madhumati streams meet, in the hills across the Ganga from Rishikesh.
StandingMansa Devi Temple, Haridwar
The Devi shrine on Bilwa Parvat above Har ki Pauri, one of the three Siddha Peethas of Haridwar with Chandi Devi and Maya Devi, and one of the city’s Panch Tirthas.
StandingBagnath Temple, Bageshwar
The Shiva temple at the meeting of the Sarayu and Gomti that gives Bageshwar its name. Its Uttarayani mela at Makar Sankranti is the great fair of Kumaon, and in January 1921 it was the scene of the end of coolie begar.
StandingTriyuginarayan Temple
The Vishnu temple where, by the tradition of the Kedar valley, Shiva and Parvati were married with Narayana giving the bride away and Brahma as priest. The fire before the temple, the Akhand Dhuni, is said to have burned since that wedding.
StandingShri Radha Rani (Ladli ji) Temple, Barsana
The temple of Radha on Bhanugarh hill above Barsana, the village of her father Vrishabhanu. It is the centre of Radhashtami and of the Lathmar Holi that draws all Braj each spring.
StandingNand Bhavan (Nand Baba Temple), Nandgaon
The house of Nanda Baba on Nandishvar hill, where Krishna is worshipped as a cowherd boy with his foster parents and his brother. With Barsana it makes the pair of villages of Braj’s Lathmar Holi.
StandingDauji Temple, Baldeo
The chief temple of Balarama in Braj, in the town named after him, with a tall black murti of Dauji and his consort Revati. Its Huranga, the day after Holi, is the last and wildest play of the Braj Holi.
StandingKaal Bhairav Temple, Varanasi
The shrine of Kaal Bhairav, guardian and magistrate of Kashi, whom every pilgrim must visit for leave to stay in the city. His silver-faced murti rides a dog and holds a staff of peacock feathers.
StandingBade (Lete) Hanuman Temple, Prayagraj
The shrine of the reclining Hanuman beside the fort at the Sangam, where a murti some six metres long lies below ground level. In the monsoon the Ganga rises into the shrine, and Prayagraj takes it as the river bathing Hanuman.
StandingMehandipur Balaji Temple
A Hanuman shrine in a narrow valley between Dausa and Karauli, where people come to be freed of sankat, afflictions of spirits and the mind. Three deities sit in court here: Balaji, Pretraj Sarkar and Bhairav, the kotwal.
StandingKaila Devi Temple, Karauli
The hill temple of Kaila Devi on the Kalisil stream in the Trikuta hills, kuldevi of the Yaduvanshi house of Karauli. Its Chaitra fair is one of the largest in eastern Rajasthan.
StandingBet Dwarka (Shankhoddhar)
An island at the mouth of the Gulf of Kutch, held to be the part of Dwaraka where Shri Krishna lived with his family, and where Sudama came with his handful of rice. Pilgrims complete the Dwarka yatra here.
StandingChamunda Mata Temple, Chotila
The temple of Chamunda on top of Chotila hill, the one high point on the flat Saurashtra plain, reached by a long stair. She is the kuldevi of a great many Gujarati families.
StandingNishkalank Mahadev, Koliyak
Five Shiva lingas on a platform a kilometre out in the Gulf of Khambhat, reached on foot only when the tide goes out. Here, the katha says, the Pandavas were cleansed of the sin of the war.
StandingStambheshwar Mahadev, Kavi Kamboi
A Shiva shrine on the shore where the Mahi meets the Gulf of Khambhat, swallowed by the sea twice a day and given back at low tide. The Skanda Purana ties it to Kartikeya’s victory over Tarakasura.
StandingChintaman Ganesh Temple, Ujjain
Ujjain’s largest Ganesh temple, across the Shipra at Jawasiya, where three self-manifest Ganesh murtis sit side by side. Ujjain holds that Shri Rama, Sita and Lakshmana worshipped here in their exile.
StandingMangalnath Temple, Ujjain
A Shiva temple on a rise above the Shipra, held to be the birthplace of Mangal, the planet Mars. People with Mangal dosha in their horoscope come here for the bhat puja.
StandingShri Pitambara Peeth, Datia
An ashram-temple of the Mahavidyas in Datia, founded by a renunciate known simply as Swami ji. Bagalamukhi, the Devi in yellow, is worshipped here for victory over enemies and in lawsuits.
StandingMaa Bamleshwari Temple, Dongargarh
The temple of Bamleshwari on a 1,600-foot hill above Dongargarh, with a second, lower shrine to Chhoti Bamleshwari at its foot. In the two Navratris it is the busiest Devi temple in Chhattisgarh.
StandingShani Shingnapur
A five-and-a-half-foot black stone of Shani Dev standing under the open sky, with no roof and no walls. The village around it is famous across India for houses without doors, kept so in trust that Shani guards them.
StandingSwayambhu Ganpati, Ganpatipule
A Ganapati on a beach of the Konkan, where the deity is the hill itself and pilgrims walk round the whole hill as parikrama. He is called the guardian of the western gate of Bharat.
StandingSaptashrungi Devi, Vani
The Devi of the seven peaks above Vani, an eighteen-armed form carved into the cliff and painted red. Marathi tradition counts her as the half of Maharashtra’s three and a half Shakti Peethas.
StandingKukke Subramanya Temple
The Subrahmanya of the Western Ghats, worshipped as protector of the serpents, where families come to perform Sarpa Samskara and Ashlesha Bali for relief from naga dosha.
StandingMookambika Temple, Kollur
The Devi who silenced the asura Kaumasura, worshipped in a linga split by a golden line into Shiva and Shakti, at the foot of the Kodachadri hills. Kerala and Karnataka bring their children here to begin learning.
RebuiltAnnapoorneshwari Temple, Horanadu
The Devi of food in the forested valley of the Bhadra, where every visitor, at any hour, is given a meal and a place to sleep.
StandingDurgaparameshwari Temple, Kateel
A Devi temple on a rock in the middle of the Nandini river, near Mangaluru, and the home of one of the oldest touring Yakshagana troupes of the coast.
StandingAttukal Bhagavathy Temple, Thiruvananthapuram
The Devi of Thiruvananthapuram whose Pongala festival brings lakhs of women to cook offerings of rice on the city’s streets on a single morning. It is entered in the Guinness records as the largest gathering of women for a religious purpose.
StandingChottanikkara Bhagavathy Temple
The Devi near Kochi who is worshipped in three forms in a single day, and whose lower shrine, Keezhkavu, is where families bring those troubled in mind for healing.
StandingVadakkunnathan Temple, Thrissur
The great Shiva temple at the centre of Thrissur, held to be the first temple founded by Parashurama in the land he reclaimed from the sea. Its grounds host the Thrissur Pooram, and the temple with its murals is a national monument.
StandingThriprayar Sree Rama Temple
The first of the Nalambalam, the four temples of the four sons of Dasharatha that Kerala visits in the month of Karkidakam. Shri Rama here is four-armed and presides over the Arattupuzha Pooram.
StandingMannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple
A grove-temple of the serpent king near Haripad, with tens of thousands of stone naga images among its trees, where the worship is led by the eldest woman of a Namboothiri family.
StandingRajarajeshwara Temple, Taliparamba
One of the most important Shiva temples of Malabar, counted among the 108 Shiva temples of Kerala, where devotees seek the answers of the deva-prashna and offer the ponninkudam, a golden pot.
StandingAnanthapura Lake Temple
The only lake temple of Kerala, standing in the middle of a rectangular tank, held to be the original seat of the Padmanabha of Thiruvananthapuram. For decades a vegetarian crocodile named Babia lived in its waters.
StandingParassini Madappura Sree Muthappan Temple
A riverside shrine in north Malabar where the deity Muthappan comes alive every day as theyyam, offers his blessing to each devotee in person, and every visitor is fed.
StandingKamakshi Amman Temple, Mangadu
The mango grove where Devi Kamakshi did tapas amid five fires before going on to Kanchipuram to marry Shiva. Worship is offered here to a Sri Chakra that the temple says Adi Shankaracharya installed to calm the fire.
StandingGnana Saraswati Temple, Basar
One of the very few temples of Saraswati in India, on the bank of the Godavari, where Maharshi Vyasa is held to have made the murti from three handfuls of sand. Children are brought here to write their first letters.
StandingKaleshwara Mukteswara Temple, Kaleshwaram
A Shiva temple at the meeting of the Godavari and the Pranhita, where two lingas share one base, Shiva and Yama together. With Srisailam and Draksharamam it gave the Telugu land its old name, Trilinga.
StandingGundicha Temple, Puri
The garden temple at the far end of Puri’s Bada Danda, where Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra ride in their chariots every Ashadh and stay for seven days. For the rest of the year it stands empty, its altar waiting.
StandingMaa Mangala Temple, Kakatpur
The Devi temple on the Prachi river whose blessing begins every Navakalebara of Jagannath: here the Daitapati servitors pray until Maa Mangala shows them in a dream where the sacred neem trees stand.
StandingAlarnath Temple, Brahmagiri
The temple 23 km from Puri where pilgrims go during Anavasara, the fortnight after the Snana Yatra when Jagannath is hidden from view; for those days, devotees hold, the Lord gives darshan as Alarnath.
StandingMaa Tarini Temple, Ghatagaon
The forest Devi of Ghatagaon in Kendujhar, to whom all Odisha sends coconuts. Drivers on the highways stop at roadside Tarini boxes and drop a coconut in, and the coconuts are carried to her temple.
StandingDeo Surya Mandir, Aurangabad
A stone Sun temple at Deo in south Bihar that faces west, to the setting sun, and is the greatest Chhath shrine of Bihar. Lakhs of vratis bathe in its Surya Kund each Kartik and Chaitra.
StandingHarihar Nath Temple, Sonepur
The temple of Harihar Nath at Sonepur, where the Gandak meets the Ganga and where the Puranic katha of Gajendra Moksha is placed. Its Kartik Purnima bath begins the Sonepur Mela, long the biggest animal fair in Asia.
StandingThawe Bhawani Temple, Gopalganj
The Durga temple of Thawe near Gopalganj, the chief Devi shrine of west Bihar, tied by its katha to a humble devotee named Rahshu whose bhakti brought the Devi here.
StandingBaba Garibnath Temple, Muzaffarpur
The Shiva temple that north Bihar calls the Deoghar of Bihar. Through the month of Shravan kanwariyas walk here from the Ganga at Pahleja Ghat with water for Garibnath.
StandingAjgaibinath Temple, Sultanganj
The Shiva temple on a rock in the north-flowing Ganga at Sultanganj, where the great Shravani kanwar walk to Deoghar begins. Pilgrims fill their pots here and carry the water about 105 km on foot to Baba Baidyanath.
StandingUchchaith Bhagwati Temple, Madhubani
The Devi sthan near Benipatti in Mithila where, by the Mithila tradition, Kalidasa received his learning. The Bhagwati here is worshipped in a murti without a head.
StandingSingheshwar Sthan, Madhepura
The great Shiva temple of the Kosi region, which local tradition ties to the rishi Shringi, who performed the putrakameshti yajna for Raja Dasharatha.
StandingBasukinath Temple, Dumka
The Shiva temple 45 km from Deoghar that completes the Baidyanath pilgrimage. Pilgrims say Baba Baidyanath’s court is the civil court and Basukinath’s the criminal court, where prayers are heard quickly.
StandingMaa Dewri Temple, Tamar
A stone temple near Tamar on the Ranchi–Jamshedpur road where a sixteen-armed Durga is worshipped, six days of the week by tribal Pahan priests and one day by Brahmin priests.
StandingMayureshwar (Moreshwar) Temple, Morgaon
The first and last stop of the Ashtavinayaka yatra and the chief seat of the Ganapatya tradition. Here, the Ganesha Purana says, Shri Ganesh came as Mayureshwar on a peacock and slew the asura Sindhu.
StandingSiddhivinayak Temple, Siddhatek
The one Ashtavinayaka whose Ganesha turns his trunk to the right. Bhagwan Vishnu, says the Mudgala Purana, won his siddhi here before slaying Madhu and Kaitabha.
StandingGirijatmaj Temple, Lenyadri
The only Ashtavinayaka on a hill and inside a cave. Mata Parvati, the Ganesha Purana says, did tapas here for twelve years to have Ganesha as her son.
StandingVighneshwar (Vighnahar) Temple, Ozar
The shrine on the Kukadi where Ganesha subdued Vighnasura, the asura of obstacles, and took the name Vighneshwar. Its shikhara is covered in gold.
StandingMahaganapati Temple, Ranjangaon
The Ashtavinayaka where Bhagwan Shiva worshipped Ganesha before he destroyed the three cities of Tripurasura. Ganesha here is Mahaganapati, the most powerful of the eight forms.
StandingSubramaniya Swamy Temple, Tiruchendur
The second of Murugan’s six abodes and the only one on the seashore. Here, the Kanda Puranam says, Murugan defeated the asura Surapadman, and every Skanda Shashti the battle is enacted on the sand.
StandingSwaminatha Swamy Temple, Swamimalai
The fourth of Murugan’s six abodes, where the boy Murugan explained the meaning of Om to his father, Bhagwan Shiva. Shiva’s shrine stands below; the son’s shrine stands on top.
StandingPazhamudircholai Murugan Temple, Solaimalai
The sixth of Murugan’s abodes, in the forest of the Alagar hills above Madurai. Here, the Tamil tradition says, the boy Murugan tested the poetess Avvaiyar with a question about fruit.
StandingTungnath
The third of the Pancha Kedar and the highest Shiva temple of the five, at 3,680 m on the ridge between the Mandakini and Alaknanda. The arms of Mahadev are worshipped here.
StandingRudranath
The fourth of the Pancha Kedar, a rock shrine among alpine meadows at about 3,600 m, where the face of Mahadev is worshipped as Neelkanth. It is the hardest of the five to reach.
StandingMadhyamaheshwar (Madmaheshwar)
The second of the Pancha Kedar in the order of worship, where the middle, the navel, of Mahadev is worshipped. It sits in a high meadow at 3,497 m, looking up at the four summits of Chaukhamba.
StandingKalpeshwar
The fifth of the Pancha Kedar, where the jata of Mahadev is worshipped. At 2,200 m in the Urgam valley, it is the only one of the five open all year.
StandingRenuka Devi Temple, Mahur (Ekaveerika)
Mahurye Ekaveerika: the Ashtadasha Shakti Peetha stotra names the Devi of Mahur among its eighteen. On the same hills stand the shrines of Sati Anasuya and the Datta Shikhar, held to be the birthplace of Bhagwan Dattatreya.
StandingGarhkalika Temple, Ujjain
Ujjayinyam Mahakali: many identify the Mahakali of the eighteen Shakti Peethas with Garhkalika, on the old fort mound of Avantika. Ujjain remembers it as the Devi who gave Kalidasa his speech.
StandingPuruhutika Devi and Kukkuteswara Temple, Pithapuram
Pithikayam Puruhutika: one of the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas, inside the temple of Shiva as Kukkuteswara. Pithapuram is also Pada Gaya, the feet of the three Gayas, and the birthplace of Sripada Srivallabha of the Datta tradition.
StandingAlopi Devi (Alop Shankari) Temple, Prayagraj
Prayage Madhaveshwari: the Ashtadasha stotra places a Devi at Prayag, and many identify her with Alopi, where no murti stands and a wooden cradle is worshipped instead. Others identify the Prayag peetha with the Lalita Devi temple in the city.
StandingMangla Gauri Temple, Gaya
Gayayam Mangalya Gauri: on the hill above the Vishnupad temple, the Devi is worshipped in the form of the breast of Sati, the giver of nourishment. Pilgrims who come to Gaya for pinda-daan climb here for her darshan.
StandingVishalakshi Temple, Kashi
Varanasyam Vishalakshi: in the lanes behind Mir Ghat, the Devi of Kashi sits where, by the Peetha Nirnaya, the jewelled earring of Sati fell. Tamil pilgrims to Kashi hold her in special love.
StandingBhimakali Temple, Sarahan
The kuladevi of the Bushahr kingdom, in twin towers of the Kath-kuni style, wood and stone in alternate courses, with slate roofs and silver doors. Local tradition counts it among the Shakti Peethas.
StandingNaganathaswamy Temple, Keezhaperumpallam (Ketu)
The Ketu sthala of the Navagraha circuit, a quiet village temple near the Kaveri’s mouth where, the sthala purana tells, the serpent Vasuki worshipped Shiva.
StandingVridha Badri, Animath
A small temple in Animath village, about 7 km from Jyotirmath, where Bhagwan Vishnu appeared to Devarshi Narada as an old man. It is one of the Sapta Badri and is often counted among the Panch Badri.
StandingBhavishya Badri, Subhain
The Badri of the future, in the forest above Subhain village at about 2,744 metres. The tradition holds that when the road to Badrinath is closed by the meeting of the Nara and Narayana mountains, Badrinarayana will be worshipped here.
StandingVishnuprayag
The highest of the Pancha Prayag, where the Vishnuganga (the Alaknanda) meets the Dhauliganga below Jyotirmath. Devarshi Narada worshipped Vishnu here.
StandingNandprayag
The confluence of the Nandakini with the Alaknanda, named after King Nanda, who performed a yajna here. The Gopalji temple stands above the sangam.
StandingKarnaprayag
The confluence of the Pindar with the Alaknanda, where Karna did tapas to Surya Dev. The temple of Uma Devi stands above the sangam.
StandingRudraprayag
The confluence of the Mandakini, coming down from Kedarnath, with the Alaknanda. Here Devarshi Narada did tapas and Bhagwan Shiva taught him music; here the roads to Kedarnath and Badrinath part.
StandingDevprayag and the Raghunath Temple
Where the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda meet and the river is first called Ganga. Above the sangam is the Raghunath temple, where Shri Rama did tapas, sung by Periyalvar as one of the 108 Divya Desams.
StandingDwarka Sharada Peetham (Kalika Matha)
The western (Paschimamnaya) seat of the four mathas of Adi Shankaracharya, beside the Dwarkadhish temple. It holds the Samaveda and the mahavakya Tat tvam asi; its first acharya was Hastamalaka.
StandingGovardhan Matha, Puri
The eastern (Purvamnaya) seat of Adi Shankaracharya’s four mathas, at Puri close to the Jagannath temple. It holds the Rigveda and the mahavakya Prajnanam Brahma; its first acharya was Padmapada.
StandingMaa Vindhyavasini Temple, Vindhyachal
The Devi who promised in the Durga Saptashati that she would be born in Nanda’s house and live on the Vindhya hills. Her temple stands a short walk from the Ganga at Vindhyachal, at one corner of a sacred triangle of three Devi shrines.
StandingMaa Sharda Devi Temple, Maihar
Sharda Mata sits on the top of Trikuta hill above Maihar, reached by 1,063 steps. Bundelkhand remembers the brothers Alha and Udal as her first devotees.
StandingShri Naina Devi Temple, Bilaspur
A Devi temple on a Shivalik ridge above the Gobind Sagar lake, held in Himachal and Punjab to be the place where Sati’s eyes fell. It is also called Mahishapeeth, for the Devi’s victory over Mahishasura.
StandingMata Chintpurni (Chhinnamastika) Temple
The Devi who ends worry, Chintpurni, worshipped as Chhinnamastika in a pindi on a ridge of the Una hills. Four Mahadev temples guard her seat, one in each direction.
StandingDanteshwari Temple, Dantewada
The Devi of Bastar, at the meeting of the Shankini and Dankini rivers, where Bastar tradition holds that Sati’s tooth fell. Her parasol and doli travel to Jagdalpur every year for the 75 days of Bastar Dussehra.
RebuiltBahuchar Mata Temple, Becharaji
The seat of Bahuchara Mata in the Chunval country of north Gujarat, counted with Ambaji and Pavagadh as one of Gujarat’s three Shakti Peethas. The Kinnar community holds her as their own Mother.
RebuiltDevi Talab Mandir (Tripuramalini), Jalandhar
Jalandhara Peetha, named in the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra as the seat where Sati’s breast fell, with the Devi as Tripuramalini. The great tank beside the temple gives it its name, and every December the Harivallabh music festival is held at its edge.
StandingChandrika Devi Temple, Lucknow
A Devi temple on the bank of the Gomti at Bakshi Ka Talab, north of Lucknow, where the Devi is held to have appeared in the hollow of an old neem tree. The new-moon nights and Navratri bring the city out to her.
RebuiltGalteshwar Mahadev Temple, Sarnal
A 12th-century Shiva temple at the meeting of the Galta and the Mahi, the rarest kind of temple in Gujarat: a bhumija temple of the Malwa style, built by Gujarati hands. Its fallen tower stood again in 2021.
StandingHatkeshwar Mahadev Temple, Vadnagar
The family deity of the Nagar Brahmins, a swayambhu linga at Vadnagar, the old town the Skanda Purana’s Nagara Khanda calls Chamatkarapura in the kshetra of Hatakeshwara. Its outer walls are crowded with carving.
StandingVijayasan Devi Temple, Salkanpur
A siddha peetha of the Devi as Vijayasan, she who sat on the seat of victory after slaying Raktabija, on a Vindhya hilltop above the Narmada country. More than a thousand steps lead up to her.
StandingChandrahasini Devi Temple, Chandrapur
A Devi temple on a hill above the Mahanadi at Chandrapur, where Chhattisgarh tradition holds that Sati’s cheek fell. Her younger sister Nathaldai sits on an island in the river below.
StandingBaba Brahmeshwar Nath Temple, Brahmpur
The great Shiva temple of the Bhojpur country, in the village named for Bhagwan Brahma, who by the temple’s tradition set up the linga himself. Its door faces west, unlike almost every other Shiva temple.
StandingHateshwari Mata Temple, Hatkoti
On a flat of land where the Pabbar is met by the Vishkulti and Raina streams, the Devi of the upper Shimla hills stands in metal as Mahishasuramardini. Her temple at Hatkoti is the oldest-looking shrine in the apple country of Jubbal and Rohru.
StandingTara Devi Temple, Shimla
Tara, the Mahavidya who carries the devotee across the sea of samsara, has her seat on Tarav hill south-west of Shimla. The Sen family of Keonthal, who came to these hills from Bengal, brought her with them.
StandingShikari Devi Temple, Mandi
The highest peak of Mandi district carries a Devi who will not be roofed. Snow falls straight on her stones each winter, and the shrine stays closed from about November to March.
StandingManikaran, Shiva and Ram Temples by the Hot Springs
Boiling water bursts from the rocks beside the Parvati river at Manikaran, and pilgrims cook rice for prasad in it. The katha of the place is of a jewel, a mani, that Mata Parvati lost here.
StandingSurkanda Devi Temple
Above the road from Mussoorie to Chamba, on a peak that looks out on the whole Garhwal snow range, Garhwal remembers the place where Sati’s head fell. It is one of the three Devi shrines of Tehri that pilgrims visit together.
StandingKunjapuri Devi Temple
The nearest of the Tehri Devi shrines to Rishikesh, on a hill where Garhwal holds that the upper body of Sati fell. People climb it before dawn to see the sun rise over the Himalaya.
StandingChandrabadni Devi Temple
On Chandrakoot hill between Devprayag and Tehri, the Devi has no image at all: a Shri Yantra on a stone is worshipped under a cloth, and the priest himself covers his eyes when he changes it.
StandingPurnagiri Temple, Tanakpur
Above the gorge where the Kali river, called the Sharda here, leaves the mountains for the plains, Kumaon and the Terai remember the place where the navel of Sati fell. Its Chaitra fair brings lakhs of pilgrims for three months.
StandingHaat Kalika Temple, Gangolihat
In a deodar forest at Gangolihat, Kumaon worships Mahakali whom the Kumaon Regiment of the Indian Army calls its own. Soldiers going to war and coming back have climbed to her for generations.
StandingPatal Bhuvaneshwar Cave Temple
You go down into the earth on chains, through a passage barely wide enough for a body, and come out into a hall where the rock has grown into the forms of Sheshnag, Ganesha’s head and the four doors of the yugas. The Skanda Purana says that whoever worships here worships at all the tirthas at once.
StandingGolu Devta Temple, Chitai
Kumaon brings its lawsuits to Golu Devta. Devotees write their grievance on paper, often on stamp paper as if filing in a court, tie it up at Chitai, and hang a bell when the matter is settled.
StandingKasar Devi Temple, Almora
A small Devi shrine on a ridge north of Almora, where Swami Vivekananda sat in meditation in 1890. On the full moon of Kartik a fair fills the hill.
StandingMaya Devi Temple, Haridwar
Haridwar was once called Mayapuri after this Devi. She is the city’s presiding Devi and one of its three Siddha Peethas with Mansa Devi and Chandi Devi.
StandingOmkareshwar Temple, Ukhimath
When snow closes Kedarnath each Kartik, Baba Kedar is carried down in his palki to Ukhimath and worshipped here through the winter. The town is also where the Puranas place the marriage of Usha and Aniruddha.
StandingKalimath Temple
At Kalimath, on a river bank in the Kedar valley, Mahakali is said to have gone into the earth after slaying Raktabija. No murti is worshipped; the priests open the covered kund for a single night in the year.
StandingMahasu Devta Temple, Hanol
On the Tons river at the edge of Uttarakhand and Himachal, the four Mahasu brothers rule the valleys of Jaunsar-Bawar as their gods and judges. Hanol is the seat of the eldest, Botha Mahasu.
StandingShri Devikoop Bhadrakali Temple, Kurukshetra
The Kurukshetra Shakti Peetha of the Pithanirnaya list, where the right ankle of Sati is said to have fallen into a well. Before the war the Pandavas came here to pray for victory, and devotees still offer small horses of clay and metal.
StandingMata Lal Devi Temple, Amritsar
A temple built around the memory of a woman devotee of Amritsar, Lal Devi, whose followers made it a small Vaishno Devi in the plains: low passages, ankle-deep water, and the Devi’s three pindis at the end.
StandingSukrala Mata Temple, Billawar
The Devi of the Kathua hills, worshipped as Sharada who came down from Kashmir. Dogra families of the Billawar area count her their kuldevi.
StandingMankameshwar Temple, Lucknow
The oldest Shiva temple of Lucknow, on the bank of the Gomti, which Lucknow holds was founded by Lakshmana, after whom the city was once called Lakshmanpur. Its Sawan Mondays bring queues down to the river.
StandingDevi Patan Temple, Tulsipur
Near the Nepal border at Tulsipur, Maa Pateshwari’s temple is counted by the region among the Shakti Peethas, where Sati’s shoulder and her garment, the pat, fell. Each Chaitra Navratri a procession of the Nath yogis comes from Nepal to her.
StandingShakumbhari Devi Temple, Saharanpur
In the Durga Saptashati the Devi promises that in a time of drought she will feed the world with vegetables grown from her own body, and be called Shakambhari. Her seat in the Shivalik hills north of Saharanpur is one of the great Devi tirthas of western Uttar Pradesh.
StandingSavitri Mata Temple, Pushkar
Bhagwan Brahma’s temple stands by the lake at Pushkar; his consort Savitri sits apart on the highest hill to the south, where the Padma Purana says she went after the yajna. Pilgrims climb to her after Brahma’s darshan.
StandingTekri Temples of Chamunda and Tulja Bhavani, Dewas
Two sister Devis sit side by side on the little hill, the tekri, in the middle of Dewas: Tulja Bhavani, the elder, and Chamunda, the younger. The town is held to take its name from the Devi’s dwelling, Devi-vasini.
StandingMaa Baglamukhi Temple, Nalkheda
Baglamukhi, the Mahavidya who stills the tongue and the movement of enemies, is worshipped at Nalkheda in a three-faced image, and havans in yellow are offered day and night by those facing lawsuits, elections and battles of every kind.
StandingChandi Mata Temple, Ghunchapali (Bagbahra)
In the hills near Bagbahra a self-formed rock image of the Devi is worshipped as Chandi Mata, and in the evening a family of wild bears walks in for the prasad. Chhattisgarh comes to see both.
StandingHanuman Tok and Ganesh Tok, Gangtok
On two ridges above Gangtok, the Indian Army keeps a shrine of Hanuman and a tiny shrine of Ganesha. From Hanuman Tok, Kanchenjunga fills the northern sky.
StandingTara Tarini Temple, Ganjam
On Kumari hill above the Rushikulya, two sister Devis, Tara and Tarini, are worshipped as one of the oldest Shakti seats of Odisha. Children are brought here for their first haircut, and the hair offered fills sacks by the end of Chaitra.
StandingKalijai Temple, Chilika
A small island in Chilika, Asia’s largest brackish-water lake, carries the shrine of Kalijai, guardian of everyone who crosses its waters. At Makar Sankranti boats come from every shore of the lake.
StandingCuttack Chandi Temple
The presiding Devi of Cuttack, the old capital of Odisha, sits near the Mahanadi below Barabati fort. During Durga Puja the whole city turns towards her.
StandingMaa Sarala Temple, Jhankad
The Devi of Jhankad gave the farmer’s son Siddheswar Parida the gift of poetry, and he became Sarala Das, who wrote the Mahabharata in Odia. Odisha worships her as the mother of its literature.
StandingMaa Budhi Thakurani Temple, Brahmapur
Brahmapur calls its Devi the Old Lady, Budhi Thakurani, and every second year it holds a month of festival for her in which she leaves her temple to live among the weavers who brought her.
StandingRamachandi Temple, Konark
Where the Kushabhadra river meets the sea near Konark, Odisha worships Ramachandi, held to be the presiding Devi of the Arka Kshetra of the Sun.
StandingAundha Nagnath Temple
Maharashtra holds Aundha’s Nagnath to be the Nageshvara Jyotirlinga of the stotra, “in the Daruka forest”. Its Shivling sits in an underground chamber, and its temple is said to have turned round for the saint Namdev.
StandingVaijnath Temple, Parli
Maharashtra counts Parli’s Vaidyanath as the Jyotirlinga of that name, reading the stotra’s line as “Paralyam Vaidyanatham”. Devotees may touch the linga with their own hands.
StandingBhuleshwar Temple, Yavat
From outside, the Bhuleshwar temple on its hill near Pune looks like a fort with domes; inside are some of the finest sculptures of the Deccan, among them a rare form of Ganesha as a goddess.
StandingSiddheshwar Temple, Solapur
Solapur’s temple stands on an island in a lake by the old fort, over the samadhi of Siddharama, a Shivasharana of Basavanna’s time who worked for the people of this town. Its Makar Sankranti festival carries tall poles through the city.
StandingHarihareshwar Temple
On the Konkan coast where the Savitri river meets the sea, Harihareshwar is called the Dakshin Kashi. Its pradakshina goes out over the black rocks of the shore, and its Lord was the family deity of the Peshwas.
StandingNarsobawadi (Nrusimhawadi) Datta Mandir
At the meeting of the Krishna and the Panchganga, Nrusimha Saraswati, whom the Guru Charitra honours as the second avatar of Dattatreya in Kali Yuga, lived twelve years and left his padukas. When the Krishna floods, the river enters the shrine and bathes them.
StandingKhodiyar Mata Temple, Rajpara
Khodiyar Mata, the Charan girl who became a Devi and rides a crocodile, is the most loved mother goddess of Saurashtra. Her temple at Rajpara near Bhavnagar, by a deep pool, was the shrine of the Bhavnagar kings.
StandingUmiya Mata Temple, Unjha
In the market town of Unjha, the Kadva Patidar community of Gujarat worships its kuldevi Umiya, Mata Parvati as Uma. Patidar families from across the world come home to her.
StandingPenusila Lakshmi Narasimha Temple, Penchalakona
After slaying Hiranyakashipu, Bhagwan Narasimha came still blazing to these hills and cooled himself in the stream, and here he took Chenchu Lakshmi, the forest girl, as his bride. He is worshipped in a rock that shows two figures embracing.
StandingUndavalli Caves
Across the Krishna from Vijayawada a whole hillside has been cut into a four-storeyed temple, and on its upper floor Bhagwan Vishnu lies on Shesha in a single carved figure about five metres long.
StandingKondagattu Anjaneya Swamy Temple
Telangana’s most visited Hanuman temple stands on a rocky hill near Jagtial. The swayambhu image has two faces, Hanuman’s and Narasimha’s, and the hill is believed to have been touched by the Sanjeevani mountain as Hanuman flew over it.
StandingLakshmi Narasimha Swamy Temple, Antarvedi
At the very end of the Godavari, where its Vasishta branch meets the sea, Narasimha is worshipped at the place where Maharshi Vasishta is said to have done tapas. His wedding festival in Magha draws lakhs to the river mouth.
StandingLokanarkavu Temple, Vadakara
The Devi of the Vadakkan Pattukal, the ballads of north Malabar, stands in a grove below a rock cave at Lokanarkavu. Thacholi Othenan, the hero of the songs, came to her every day before he fought.
StandingKadampuzha Devi Temple
At Kadampuzha the Devi has no murti; she is worshipped in a small opening in the ground, as the huntress Parvati who came with Shiva to test Arjuna. Devotees break coconuts in her name to remove obstacles.
StandingKottiyoor Temples (Akkare and Ikkare)
Kerala holds Kottiyoor to be the place where Daksha performed his yajna and Sati gave up her body. Its forest shrine on the far bank of the Bavali is opened for just four weeks a year, in the monsoon.
StandingAdi Kumbeswarar Temple, Kumbakonam
Kumbakonam takes its name from this temple’s linga: the pot, kumbha, of amrita that Shiva broke with an arrow after the pralaya, mixing the nectar with sand. It is the chief temple of the Mahamaham.
StandingDevi Karumariamman Temple, Thiruverkadu
On the western edge of Chennai, Karumariamman, the dark Mother of the rains, is worshipped in a swayambhu form and an anthill. On Sundays and in the month of Aadi her temple is one of the busiest in Tamil Nadu.
StandingMarudhamalai Subramanya Swamy Temple
On a hill of marudham trees at the edge of Coimbatore, Murugan stands as the god of the Kongu country. Devotees call it the seventh abode after the six Padai Veedu, and the cave of the snake-charmer siddha is just below the shrine.
StandingAnjanadri Hill, Hampi (Kishkindha)
Across the Tungabhadra from Hampi, in the country the Ramayana calls Kishkindha, a white shrine on a boulder hill marks where the Kishkindha tradition holds that Mata Anjana gave birth to Hanuman.
StandingKadri Manjunath Temple, Mangaluru
On Kadri hill in Mangaluru, Shiva is worshipped as Manjunatha in one of the oldest temples of the coast. Above it lie the Kadri Jogi Math of the Nath yogis and spring-fed tanks where water pours from cow-mouth spouts.
StandingAlwarthirunagari (Tirukurugur), Adinatha Perumal Temple
The birthplace of Nammalvar on the Tamraparni, once called Tirukurugur, and one of the 108 Divya Desams. The tamarind tree in whose hollow the child saint sat for sixteen years still stands in the temple.
StandingAvudaiyarkoil (Tiruperunturai), Atmanathaswamy Temple
The temple raised at Tiruperunturai where Manikkavacakar met Bhagwan Shiva as a guru under a kurundam tree and spent the Pandya king’s horse money on it. In the sanctum there is only a pedestal: Shiva is worshipped here as the formless Self.
StandingAyodhya (Saketa)
The city of the Ikshvakus on the Sarayu, first of the seven moksha-giving cities, birthplace of Shri Ram and of five Jain Tirthankaras. A Shunga-period inscription found here calls the place Kosala and names its king Dhanadeva as a descendant of Pushyamitra.
StandingBharuch (Bhrigukachchha)
The port on the lower Narmada named for Maharshi Bhrigu, which Greek sailors of the 1st century called Barygaza, the greatest harbour of western India. It was among the first Indian towns raided by Arab fleets and armies in the 7th and 8th centuries, and the birthplace of K. M. Munshi.
StandingCoimbatore (Kovai)
The chief city of the Kongu country, whose Perur temple goes back to the Chola age. Dheeran Chinnamalai planned to storm its Company garrison in 1800, and V. O. Chidambaram was yoked to the oil press in its jail in 1908.
StandingKailash and Mansarovar
The snow peak in western Tibet that Hindus know as the home of Shiva and Parvati, with the lake of Mansarovar at its foot. Jains, Buddhists and Bon followers hold it holy too, and no one has climbed it.
StandingKedarnath
The Himalayan Jyotirlinga at the head of the Mandakini, first of the Panch Kedar and one of Uttarakhand’s Char Dham. The linga is a rough triangular rock, the hump of Shiva in the form of a bull.
StandingBaidyanath Dham, Deoghar
The Jyotirlinga that Ravana tried to carry to Lanka, and also a Shakti Peetha where Sati’s heart fell. In Shravan lakhs of kanwariyas walk here barefoot with Ganga water from Sultanganj.
RebuiltNageshwar Jyotirlinga
The Jyotirlinga of Darukavana on the road between Dwarka and Bet Dwarka, where Shiva saved his devotee Supriya from the demon Daruka.
RebuiltYamunotri
The first of the Char Dham of Uttarakhand by the order of pilgrimage, at the head of the Yamuna below the Kalind peak. Pilgrims cook rice in the boiling Surya Kund and take it home as prasad.
StandingJyotirmath
The northern of the four amnaya mathas founded by Adi Shankaracharya, guardian of the Atharva Veda, and the winter home of Badrinath’s worship.
StandingNaimisharanya
The forest on the Gomti where Suta told the Puranas and the Mahabharata to Shaunaka and the assembled rishis. Without Naimisharanya, the Puranas say, there would be no Puranas to read.
StandingChitrakoot
The hill country on the Mandakini where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana lived for much of their exile, and where Bharata came to beg Rama to return.
StandingAmbaji (Arasuri Amba)
A Shakti Peetha in the Arasur hills on the Gujarat–Rajasthan border, where tradition says the heart of Sati fell. There is no murti: the Devi is worshipped as a yantra, dressed so that it seems a face.
RebuiltKalika Mata, Pavagadh
A Devi temple on the summit of Pavagadh above Champaner. After Mahmud Begada took the hill in 1484, a dargah stood on the temple’s top; in June 2022 a new shikhar was completed and the dhwaja flown again, for the first time in about five centuries.
StandingShamlaji
A Vishnu temple on the Meshvo river in the Aravalli foothills, where Shri Krishna is worshipped as the dark Shamaliya. The site has given some of the finest Gupta-age sculpture of western India.
RebuiltBrahma Temple, Pushkar
The best-known temple of Bhagwan Brahma, beside the lake the Padma Purana says formed where his lotus fell. Pushkar is called Tirtharaja, the king of tirthas.
RebuiltHarsiddhi Mata, Ujjain
The Devi temple of Ujjain, between the Mahakaleshwar temple and the Rudra Sagar, counted by tradition among the Shakti Peethas. She is remembered as the kuldevi of Raja Vikramaditya.
StandingMaa Chhinnamastika Temple, Rajrappa
The temple of Devi Chhinnamasta at the meeting of the Bhairavi and the Damodar in Ramgarh district, the best-known seat of this Mahavidya and a centre of Tantric sadhana in eastern Bharat.
RebuiltGangasagar (Sagar Island)
Where the Ganga meets the sea, at the southern tip of Sagar Island, beside the ashram of Maharshi Kapila. At Makar Sankranti lakhs bathe here in one of the largest melas of Bharat.
StandingMata Vaishno Devi
The cave of the Devi in the Trikuta hills above Katra, where she is worshipped as three natural rock pindis, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. It is among the most visited tirthas of Bharat.
StandingAmarnath Cave
A cave at about 3,888 metres in the mountains of Kashmir where a linga of ice forms each year. Here, the pilgrims say, Bhagwan Shiva told Mata Parvati the secret of immortality.
RuinedSharada Peeth
The seat of Devi Sharada on the Kishanganga, once the greatest centre of learning in Kashmir, which gave its name to the Sharada script. Its ruins now lie across the Line of Control.
StandingJwalamukhi Temple
The Shakti Peetha in Kangra where the Devi is worshipped as flames that burn from cracks in the rock, with no murti at all. Tradition says the tongue of Mata Sati fell here.
StandingBahula Devi Shakti Peetha, Ketugram
Ketugram near Katwa keeps the Bahula Shakti Peetha, where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra says Sati’s left arm fell. The Devi is Bahula and her Bhairava is Bhiruk.
StandingMangal Chandi Temple, Ujani (Kogram)
On a high bank of the Ajay at Kogram, once part of the old town of Ujani, Mangal Chandi is worshipped as the Ujani Shakti Peetha. Kapilambar, her Bhairava, shares the shrine.
StandingBhramari Devi Temple (Trisrota Shakti Peetha), Jalpaiguri
Trisrota, the land of three streams, is where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places Sati’s left foot. Two places in the Teesta country claim it: the Bhramari Devi temple near Bodaganj in the Baikunthapur forest, and the Bhramari temple at Shalbari near Falakata.
StandingJogadya (Yogadya) Shakti Peetha, Kshirgram
At Kshirgram the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places the right big toe of Sati. The Devi’s black stone murti lives under the water of the Kshirdighi tank and comes out for worship once a year, on the eve of Baishakh Sankranti.
StandingKiriteswari Temple, Kiritkona
Near the Bhagirathi, a few kilometres from Lalbag, the crown of Sati is said to have fallen. Kiriteswari is the oldest temple site of Murshidabad district, and the village was named India’s Best Tourism Village in 2023.
StandingKankalitala Shakti Peetha, Bolpur
On the bank of the Kopai, 9 km from Bolpur, is the kund where Sati’s waist is said to have fallen. The kund itself is worshipped; the main shrine has no murti.
StandingBargabhima Temple, Tamluk
In Tamluk, the old port of Tamralipta on the Rupnarayan, the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places Sati’s left ankle. The Devi is Bargabhima, and her bhog each day must include shol fish.
StandingRatnavali (Anandamayi) Shakti Peetha, Khanakul
On the Khanakul–Krishnanagar road by the Ratnakar river stands the Ratnavali Shakti Peetha, where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places Sati’s right shoulder. The Devi is worshipped here as Anandamayi.
StandingNalateswari Temple, Nalhati
The town of Nalhati takes its name from this temple on a low hill, where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra says the nala of Sati, the windpipe, fell. The Devi is Kalika and her Bhairava Yogesh.
StandingBakreshwar (Vakreshwar) Shakti Peetha
A tirtha of hot springs on the Bakreshwar river, where Mahadev is Vakranath, the Lord of the sage Ashtavakra. Our list says the point between Sati’s eyebrows fell here; the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra’s verse says her manas, the mind.
StandingPhullara Devi Temple, Attahas (Labpur)
Near Labpur in Birbhum the Phullara temple is worshipped as Attahas, where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places Sati’s lips. A second Attahas, at Dakshindihi near Katwa, also claims the peetha.
StandingNandikeshwari Temple, Sainthia (Nandipur)
Sainthia was once called Nandipur after this temple, where the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra places Sati’s necklace. The Devi sits under a great banyan near the Mayurakshi, a short walk from the railway station.
StandingSugandha Shakti Peetha, Shikarpur
In the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra’s list, Sati’s nose fell at Sugandha, and the Devi there is Sunanda. The seat is placed at Shikarpur, a village north of Barishal town in southern Bangladesh, where she is worshipped as Ugratara.
StandingGuhyeshwari Temple, Kathmandu
The Devi of the hidden place, on the bank of the Bagmati about a kilometre east of Pashupatinath. Nepal holds that no pilgrimage to Pashupatinath is complete without her darshan.
StandingJayanti Shakti Peetha, Nartiang Durga Temple
The Peetha Nirnaya Tantra names Jayanti as the seat where Sati’s left thigh fell. Two places claim it: the Durga temple of the Jaintia kings at Nartiang in Meghalaya, and Bamojonga near Kanaighat in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
StandingShri Shail Shakti Peetha (Mahalakshmi Bhairabi Griba Peetha), Sylhet
At Joinpur, about 3 km south-east of Sylhet town across the Surma, Bengal’s lists place the Shri Shail peetha where Sati’s neck fell. The Devi is Mahalakshmi, and the place is called the Griba Peetha, the seat of the neck.
StandingBhabanipur Shakti Peetha (Karatoyatat), Sherpur
The Karatoyatat peetha of the Tantra, placed at Bhabanipur in Bogura district, where Sati’s left anklet fell and the Devi is Aparna. Rani Bhabani of Natore restored it, and the pond of conch bangles keeps her katha.
StandingJeshoreshwari Kali Temple, Ishwaripur
The Yashor peetha, where Sati’s palms and soles fell, at Ishwaripur on the edge of the Sundarbans. Raja Pratapaditya rebuilt the temple when Ishwaripur was his capital.
RebuiltNagapooshani Amman Temple, Nainativu
On the small island of Nainativu off Jaffna, the Devi who wears the naga as her ornament. Many Tamil Shaivas identify her with Indrakshi of the Lanka peetha, where Sati’s anklets fell.
StandingManibandh (Manivedika) Shakti Peetha, Pushkar
The Shakti Peetha of Pushkar, where by the Peetha Nirnaya Tantra’s list the wrists of Sati fell. The Devi is Gayatri, the Bhairava Sarvananda; locally the shrine is also called the Chamunda Mata mandir.
StandingVarahi Devi Temple, Varanasi (Panchasagar Shakti Peetha)
A small Devi shrine in the lanes behind Man Mandir Ghat, open only in the early morning, where the Varahi murti sits below the floor. It is the most often named site of Panchasagar, the Shakti Peetha of Sati’s lower teeth.
StandingKotilingeswara Temple and the Godavari Tir Shakti Peetha, Rajahmundry
Uma Kotilingeswara stands at Kotilingala ghat on the Godavari at Rajahmundry. Most lists that try to place the Godavari Tir Shakti Peetha, where Sati’s left cheek fell, put it here at Rajahmundry, though the exact spot is not settled.
StandingJnanakshi Rajarajeshwari Temple, Bengaluru (claimed Karnat Shakti Peetha)
The Kailash Ashrama temple that gave Rajarajeshwari Nagar its name. Its tradition holds that this is Karnat, the Shakti Peetha where Sati’s ears fell, a peetha whose true site no list can fix.
StandingVirat Shakti Peetha (Ambika Devi), Viratnagar
Viratnagar, the old Bairat, is the capital of King Virata where the Pandavas spent their year in disguise. The Peetha Nirnaya Tantra counts it among the 51 Shakti Peethas: the toes of Sati’s left foot fell here, and the Devi is Ambika.
StandingBadi Patan Devi Temple, Patna (Magadh Shakti Peetha)
The guardian Devi of Patna, whose seat is counted as the Magadh Shakti Peetha, where Sati’s right thigh fell. Some lists count it as the 52nd peetha, beyond the 51.
DestroyedShrinkhala Devi, Pandua (lost Maha Shakti Peetha)
Shrinkhala Devi of Pradyumna is one of the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas, but her shrine is lost. Bengal tradition places it at Pandua in Hooghly district, where a Sultanate-era minar now stands.
StandingDhyan Badri, Urgam
One of the Sapta Badri, the seven seats of Badrinarayan in Garhwal. In the Urgam valley near Kalpeshwar, a black stone Vishnu sits in meditation.
StandingKanyakumari Bhagavathy Amman Temple
At the southern tip of Bharat, where the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal meet, the Devi stands as a maiden still waiting for Shiva. Vivekananda meditated on the rock offshore in 1892.
StandingPalani Dandayudhapani Temple
The third of Murugan’s six Arupadai Veedu, on a hill in the Western Ghats foothills. Here the young Murugan stood as a renunciant after losing the fruit of wisdom.
StandingGokarna Mahabaleshwar
The beach town where Ravana’s Atmalinga stuck fast to the earth. Pilgrims bathe in the Arabian Sea, then touch the linga through a hole in its pitha.
StandingKanaka Durga Temple, Vijayawada
The golden Durga of Indrakeeladri hill above the Krishna at Vijayawada, the city that takes its name from Arjuna’s victory. Her Navaratri is the largest festival in Andhra.
StandingAdipureeswarar (Thyagaraja) Temple, Tiruvottiyur
The great Shiva temple of north Chennai by the sea, sung by Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar. Sundarar was married here, Pattinathar attained mukti here, and Vadivudai Amman draws crowds every Friday.
StandingMasilamaneeswarar Temple, Tirumullaivoyal
Vada (northern) Tirumullaivoyal, the jasmine-gate shrine sung by Sundarar. The linga bears the scar of a king’s sword and is kept under sandal paste.
StandingTiruvalleeswarar Temple, Tiruvalithayam (Padi)
A Chola temple in Padi, north-west Chennai, where Maharshi Bharadwaja is said to have worshipped Shiva in the form of a sparrow. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMarundeeswarar Temple, Tiruvanmiyur
The Lord of medicine on the south Chennai coast, who taught Agastya the virtue of herbs. Appar and Sambandar sang it, and Maharshi Valmiki is said to have worshipped here.
StandingKachabeswarar Temple, Tirukkachur
Where Bhagwan Vishnu as the Kurma (tortoise) worshipped Shiva, and where Shiva begged food in the village to feed a hungry Sundarar.
StandingVedagiriswarar Temple, Tirukazhukundram
The eagle hill: a temple on a rock said to be the Vedas themselves, where for centuries a pair of kites came at noon to be fed by the priest. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingChandramouleeswarar Temple, Tiruvakkarai
A Chola temple on the Varaha river with a rare three-faced linga and the fierce Vakrakali, who slew the asura Vakra. Sambandar sang it.
StandingVilwanatheswarar Temple, Tiruvallam
A temple on the Ponnai river whose walls hold records from the Pallava age, among them one of the earliest inscriptions to speak of the Tevaram singers. Sambandar sang it.
StandingJalanatheeswarar Temple, Takkolam (Tiruvural)
Tiruvural, the shrine of the spring, sung by Sambandar. Near it in 949 CE the Chola crown prince Rajaditya fell on his elephant fighting the Rashtrakuta Krishna III.
StandingVedapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvothur (Cheyyar)
Tiruvothur, the place where Shiva taught the Vedas, on the Cheyyar river. Here Sambandar’s hymn turned barren male palms into fruit-bearing ones.
StandingVriddhagireeswarar (Pazhamalainathar) Temple, Vriddhachalam
Tirumudukundram, the ancient hill: a Chola temple on the Manimuktha river where Sundarar received gold he later took out of the tank at Tiruvarur. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingVeerattaneswarar Temple, Tirukkovilur
One of the eight Veerattanams, the shrines of Shiva’s heroic deeds: here he slew the asura Andhaka. Appar and Sambandar sang it, and the Nayanar king Meiporul ruled from this town.
StandingPataleeswarar Temple, Tiruppathiripuliyur (Cuddalore)
The shrine of the trumpet-flower tree in Cuddalore, where Appar came ashore after being thrown into the sea tied to a stone, singing Namasivaya.
StandingBhaktajaneswarar Temple, Tirunavalur
The birthplace of Sundarar, last of the three Tevaram singers, who sang his own village’s Lord.
StandingKripapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvennainallur
Where Shiva stopped Sundarar’s wedding with a bond of slavery and Sundarar sang his first hymn, Pitha pirai soodi. Meykandar, author of the Sivagnana Bodham, lived here.
StandingAbhirameswarar Temple, Tiruvamathur
The Lord worshipped by the cows, sung by Sambandar and Appar. The Devi has her own temple across the street.
StandingAvinashilingeswarar Temple, Avinashi
Tiruppukkozhiyur, first of the Kongu Tevaram shrines, where Sundarar’s hymn brought a boy back from a crocodile’s mouth.
StandingTirumuruganatheswarar Temple, Tirumuruganpoondi
Where Bhagwan Murugan worshipped Shiva after slaying Surapadma, and where Shiva’s ganas, dressed as hunters, robbed Sundarar of the Chera king’s gifts.
StandingSangameswarar Temple, Bhavani (Tirunana)
Dakshina Triveni: the temple where the Kaveri, the Bhavani and the unseen Amudha meet, sung by Sambandar as Tirunana. Families come to the sangam to offer tarpanam for their ancestors.
StandingArdhanareeswarar Temple, Tiruchengode
On the red hill of Tiruchengode, Shiva is worshipped as Ardhanareeswarar, half Shiva and half Parvati. Here Sambandar sang the Tiruneelakanta padigam to free his companions from fever.
StandingMagudeswarar Temple, Kodumudi
A Trimurti temple on the Kaveri, where Sundarar sang his Namasivaya padigam. The peak (kodumudi) of Meru is said to have fallen here.
StandingPasupatheeswarar Temple, Karur (Karuvur Anilai)
The shrine where Kamadhenu worshipped Shiva, in the old Chera city of Karur. Sambandar sang it, and the siddha Karuvur Devar has his shrine here.
StandingKodunkundreeswarar Temple, Piranmalai
Kodunkundram, the steep hill of the Tevaram, once the Parambu hill of the generous chief Pari. Shiva is worshipped here at three levels of the rock.
StandingPushpavaneswarar Temple, Tiruppoovanam
The flower-forest shrine on the Vaigai near Madurai, sung by all three Tevaram singers. Its utsava murti is the golden form Shiva made for the devotee Ponnanaiyal, one of his Tiruvilaiyadal leelas.
StandingEdaganathar Temple, Tiruvedagam
The shrine of the palm leaf: at Madurai, Sambandar’s hymn written on a leaf swam upstream against the Vaigai and came to rest here.
StandingAdi Ratneswarar Temple, Tiruvadanai
The town of the goat-headed elephant, where Varuna’s son regained his form, and where Surya worshipped a linga of blue gem. Sambandar sang it.
StandingThirumeninathar Temple, Tiruchuzhi
The whirlpool shrine of the Pandya country, sung by Sundarar. In a house beside it Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi was born in 1879.
StandingSaptapureeswarar (Thalamudaiyar) Temple, Tirukolakka
In Sirkazhi, the child Sambandar was given golden cymbals by Shiva here, and the Devi gave them their sound.
StandingSivalokanathar Temple, Tiruppunkur
The temple where Nandi moved aside so that Nandanar, who could not enter, might see the Lord from the gate.
StandingUdvaganathar (Kalyanasundareswarar) Temple, Tirumananjeri
Where Shiva married Parvati, by the temple’s katha; the young and unmarried come in thousands to pray for a match. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingPrananatheswarar Temple, Tirumangalakkudi
The Lord who gave back a life and the Devi who guards the wedding thread, beside the Suryanar Kovil of the Navagrahas. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingArunajateswarar Temple, Tiruppanandal
The palm-grove shrine where the linga bent to take a girl’s garland, and Kungiliya Kalaya Nayanar drew it upright with a rope round his own neck. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSakshinathar Temple, Tiruppurambiyam
The Lord who came as a witness, and the battlefield of about 885 CE that opened the way for Chola greatness. Its Vinayaka is bathed in honey once a year.
StandingApatsahayar Temple, Tiruppazhanam
One of the seven shrines of the Tiruvaiyaru Saptasthanam, sung by Appar and Sambandar. Its Lord is the helper in danger.
StandingVaidyanathar Temple, Tirumazhapadi
The temple of Nandi’s wedding, held every Panguni, and of Sundarar’s hymn Ponnar meniyane. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingSathyavageeswarar Temple, Anbil Alanthurai
A temple on the Kollidam near Lalgudi whose Vinayaka leaned his ear to hear Sambandar singing from across the flooded river. The Anbil copper plates of Sundara Chola were found in this village.
StandingNeelivaneswarar Temple, Tiruppainjeeli
The plantain-forest shrine north of Tiruchirappalli where Shiva fed a hungry Appar and where Yama was restored to his office. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingMattruraivaradeswarar Temple, Tiruvasi
Tiruppachilasramam of the Tevaram, where Sambandar’s hymn healed a chieftain’s daughter, and Nataraja dances on a serpent. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingUjjivanathar Temple, Uyyakondan Thirumalai
Tirukkarkudi of the Tevaram, a hillock temple on the western edge of Tiruchirappalli whose Lord is the one who gives life.
StandingErumbeeswarar Temple, Tiruverumbur
The ants’ Lord on a sixty-foot rock east of Tiruchirappalli, sung by Appar, where the devas came as ants and the linga tilted to let them climb.
StandingBrahma Sira Kandeeswarar Temple, Tirukkandiyur
The Veerattanam where Shiva, as Bhairava, took off the fifth head of Brahma. Appar and Sambandar sang it, and across the road stands the Divya Desam of Hara Shaapa Vimochana Perumal.
StandingBrahmapureeswarar (Alanthurai Nathar) Temple, Pullamangai
A small early Chola temple on the Kudamurutti whose walls are covered with carvings no taller than a hand, among the finest of the tenth century. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMullaivananathar (Garbharakshambigai) Temple, Tirukkarukavur
The Devi who protects the child in the womb. Women come to Garbharakshambigai from all over the world to pray for children and safe birth. Appar and Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingThenupureeswarar Temple, Patteeswaram
The shrine of Kamadhenu’s calf, where Shiva sent a canopy of pearls for the child Sambandar and the Nandis moved aside. Its Durga is held to have been the guardian of the Chola kings.
StandingKapardeeswarar (Swetha Vinayagar) Temple, Tiruvalanjuzhi
The shrine where the Kaveri turned right, near Swamimalai, famous for its white Vinayaka made of the foam of the ocean of milk. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingNageswarar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Keezhkottam)
An early Chola temple of Kumbakonam famous for its life-size sculptures and for the sun’s rays that fall on the linga in Chittirai. Appar sang it.
StandingKasi Viswanathar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Karonam)
The temple on the Mahamaham tank where the nine sacred rivers, Ganga first, come to wash away the sins they have taken from bathers. Sambandar sang it.
StandingUmamaheswarar Temple, Konerirajapuram (Tirunallam)
Tirunallam of the Tevaram, rebuilt in stone by the Chola queen Sembiyan Mahadevi in memory of her husband Gandaraditya, whose image she had carved worshipping the Lord. Its Nataraja bronze is among the largest in the south.
StandingMasilamaninathar (Gomukteeswarar) Temple, Tiruvavaduthurai
Where Tirumular, author of the Tirumandiram, sat in tapas, and where Sambandar received a purse of gold for his father’s yajna. All three Tevaram singers sang it, and the great Adheenam has its seat inside.
StandingMayuranathar Temple, Mayiladuthurai
The peacock ford, where Parvati worshipped Shiva as a peahen. Its Tula snanam in the Kaveri through Aippasi is one of the great bathing festivals of the south. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingVeerattaneswarar Temple, Tirupariyalur (Parasalur)
The Veerattanam of Daksha’s yajna, where Shiva’s fury, as Veerabhadra, broke the sacrifice to which he was not invited. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingMeghanathar (Lalithambigai) Temple, Tirumeeyachur
The temple of Lalithambigai, where by its tradition Hayagriva taught the Lalitha Sahasranama to Agastya. Sambandar sang the Lord here.
StandingSeshapureeswarar (Pampuranathar) Temple, Tiruppampuram
The serpent town, where Adishesha worshipped Shiva and Rahu and Ketu stand in a single body. Those troubled by naga dosha come here to pray.
StandingVeezhinathar Temple, Tiruveezhimizhalai
Where Bhagwan Vishnu offered his own eye to complete a thousand lotuses and received the Sudarshana chakra, and where Appar and Sambandar were given a gold coin a day through a famine.
StandingVanchinathar Temple, Srivanchiyam
Where Yama is worshipped in his own shrine as the guardian of the temple, and where those who die are said to be spared his terrors. Held equal to Kashi.
StandingAgnipureeswarar Temple, Tiruppugalur
Where Appar, the great Tevaram singer, attained the Lord’s feet in his eighty-first year, and where Muruga Nayanar kept his flower garden. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingUthirapasupatheeswarar (Ganapatheeswarar) Temple, Tiruchengattangudi
The village of Siruthondar, the Pallava general who took Vatapi and became a Nayanar, and of the Vatapi Ganapati of Dikshitar’s song. Here Shiva killed the asura Gajamukha by Ganesh’s hand.
StandingNavaneetheswarar Temple, Sikkal
The butter linga that could not be lifted, and the Murugan who takes his spear from his mother here before slaying Surapadma; at Skanda Shashti his face is said to sweat. Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingUchinathar Temple, Tirunelvayil (Sivapuri)
The Lord of Noon at Sivapuri, five kilometres from Chidambaram, who fed the child-saint Sambandar and his companions at midday. Sambandar sang him in the Tevaram.
RebuiltPalvannanathar Temple, Tirukkazhippalai (Sivapuri)
The milk-white linga sung by Sambandar, Appar and Sundarar. The Kollidam swept away its first temple, and the Lord was brought to Sivapuri, a few steps from Tirunelvayil.
StandingSivalokathyagar Temple, Tirunallur Perumanam (Achalpuram)
Where Sambandar was married and, the same day, entered the light of Shiva with his bride and the whole wedding party. His Namasivaya padigam was sung here.
StandingTirumeni Azhagar Temple, Mahendrapalli
A quiet shrine on the south bank of the Kollidam near its mouth, where Indra worshipped the Lord of the beautiful form. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMullaivananathar Temple, Ten Tirumullaivayil (Tirumullaivasal)
The southern Tirumullaivayil, a seaside shrine near Sirkazhi where a Chola king’s sword found a linga in the jasmine. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSundareswarar Temple, Kalikkamur (Annappanpettai)
A small shrine near Tiruvenkadu where Maharshi Parasara worshipped, and whose Devi came out of the sea in a fisherman’s net. Sambandar sang it.
StandingChayavaneswarar Temple, Tiruchaikkadu (Sayavanam)
One of the six shrines of the Kaveri held equal to Kashi, a raised maadakkoil near Poompuhar sung by Sambandar and Appar, where Iyarpagai Nayanar attained the Lord.
StandingPallavaneswarar Temple, Pallavaneeswaram (Poompuhar)
The Tevaram temple of Kaveripattinam, the old Chola port at the Kaveri’s mouth. Sambandar sang it twice, and it honours Pattinathar, who was born here.
StandingAranyeswarar Temple, Keezhai Tirukkattuppalli
The eastern Tirukkattuppalli, a forest shrine two kilometres from Tiruvenkadu where Indra was freed of his sin. Sambandar sang it; its Vinayaka rides a crab.
StandingVelladainathar Temple, Tirukkurukavur
Where Shiva came as a Brahmin to feed the weary Sundarar and his party, and where a well filled with Ganga water is opened once a year. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingKannayiranathar Temple, Kannarkoil (Kurumanakkudi)
The Lord of a thousand eyes near Vaitheeswaran Koil, where Indra was freed of Gautama’s curse and Vamana worshipped. Sambandar sang it.
StandingKadaimudinathar Temple, Tirukkadaimudi (Keezhaiyur)
The Lord who protects at the last moment, in a west-facing shrine by the Kaveri where Brahma worshipped. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMahalakshmeeswarar Temple, Tiruninriyur
Where the torches of a Chola king went out over a hidden linga, and where Parasurama was freed of his sin. All three Tevaram saints sang it.
StandingArulsomanathar Temple, Tiruneedur (Needur)
A shrine near Mayiladuthurai whose sand linga bears the hole by which a crab entered the Lord. Appar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingApatsahayeswarar Temple, Tiru Anniyur (Ponnur)
The Lord who helps in danger, at Ponnur near Mayiladuthurai, where Surya’s withered hand was healed. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingKalyanasundareswarar Temple, Tiruvelvikudi
Where the velvi, the sacred fire rites before the wedding of Shiva and Parvati, were performed. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it, and Chola queens and kings endowed it.
StandingAiravateswarar Temple, Edirkolpadi (Mela Tirumananjeri)
The place where the divine bridegroom was received, a short way from Tirumananjeri. Sundarar sang it, and families come here to pray for good matches.
StandingVeerateswarar Temple, Tirukkurukkai (Korukkai)
One of the eight Veerattanams, where Shiva burned Kama with the fire of his third eye. Appar sang it.
StandingKutram Poruttha Nathar Temple, Karuppariyalur (Thalaignayiru)
The Lord who forgave the offence, at Thalaignayiru west of Sirkazhi, where Indra and Hanuman were pardoned. Sundarar sang it.
StandingKundalakarneswarar Temple, Kurakkukka
The monkey’s grove, where Hanuman installed a linga and offered his earrings. One of the five shrines whose names end in ka; Appar sang it.
StandingManikkavannar Temple, Tiruvazhkoliputhur (Tiruvalaputhur)
The anthill where the sword was hidden: Vasuki worshipped here and Arjuna lost and found his sword. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingNeelakandeswarar Temple, Tirumannippadikkarai (Iluppaipattu)
A shrine on the bank of the Manni where each of the five Pandavas worshipped a linga, and Shiva drank the poison meant for them. Sundarar sang it.
StandingThuyar Theertha Nathar Temple, Omampuliyur
One of the Puliyurs of Maharshi Vyaghrapada, where Shiva as Dakshinamurti taught Parvati the meaning of Om. Sambandar and Appar sang it.
StandingPatanjalinathar Temple, Tirukkanattumullur (Kanattampuliyur)
Where Shiva showed his dance again to Maharshi Patanjali, on the north bank of the Kollidam. Sundarar sang it.
StandingSoundareswarar (Polla Pillaiyar) Temple, Tirunaraiyur
Birthplace of Nambiyandar Nambi, who gathered the Tevaram hymns into the Tirumurai, and home of the unchiselled Vinayaka who guided him. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingAmirthakadeswarar Temple, Tirukkadambur (Melakadambur)
A Chola karakkoil whose sanctum is a stone chariot with wheels and horses, raised where a drop of amrita fell. Sambandar and Appar sang it.
StandingPasupatheeswarar Temple, Pandanallur
Where Parvati, cursed after a game of ball, worshipped as a cow. Appar and Sambandar sang it, and Chola kings from Rajaraja I to Rajaraja III endowed it.
StandingKoteeswarar Temple, Tirukkodikka (Tirukodikaval)
A Chola stone temple raised by Sembiyan Mahadevi where the Kaveri flows north, with Bala Shani and Yama facing each other. Appar sang it three times and Sambandar once.
StandingPalugandanathar Temple, Tiruvappadi
The Lord who delighted in milk, where the boy Vicharasarma bathed a sand linga in milk and became Chandesa, first of Shiva’s devotees. Appar sang it.
StandingSatyagireeswarar Temple, Tirucheignalur (Senganur)
Birthplace of Chandesa Nayanar, where Sambandar stepped down from his palanquin to walk. A raised maadakkoil; Sambandar sang it.
StandingKarkadeswarar Temple, Tirundudevankudi (Nandankoil)
A small moated shrine among paddy fields near Kumbakonam, where Shiva sheltered a crab inside the linga. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSivayoginathar Temple, Tiruviyalur (Tiruvisanallur)
An early Chola temple near Kumbakonam, sung by Sambandar, with a four-fold Bhairava shrine and the well into which, the village says, the Ganga rose for Sridhara Ayyaval.
StandingKoteeswarar Temple, Kottaiyur
A temple on the Kumbakonam–Swamimalai road where Shiva appeared as a crore of lingas, and the Devi is shown kicking a ball. Appar sang it.
StandingEzhutharinathar (Aksharapureeswarar) Temple, Innambur
The Lord who knows letters: at Innambur, the temple says, Shiva came as a temple accountant to set the books right, and children are brought here before they begin school. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingVijayanatheswarar Temple, Tiruvijayamangai (Govindaputhur)
The shrine of Vijaya, Arjuna: the temple’s katha places here his tapas for the Pashupatastra. Sambandar and Appar sang it.
StandingVilvavaneswarar Temple, Tiruvaikavur
The Shivaratri temple of the Kollidam bank, where a hunter who dropped bilva leaves all night on a tiger was freed. Sambandar sang it.
StandingDayanidheeswarar Temple, Vada Kurangaduthurai (Aduthurai Perumal Koil)
The northern monkey-ford on the Kaveri, where Vali worshipped and where Shiva bent a coconut cluster for a thirsty mother. Sambandar sang it.
StandingNeyyadiyappar Temple, Tiruneithanam (Tillaisthanam)
The seventh of Tiruvaiyaru’s Saptasthanam shrines, where the linga is bathed in ghee. Its inscriptions run from a Pandya grant of the ninth century through the Cholas; Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingVyaghrapureeswarar Temple, Tirupperumpuliyur
One of the five Puliyurs, shrines of Maharshi Vyaghrapada, the sage with tiger’s feet. Sambandar sang it.
StandingAlanthuraiyar (Vadamooleswarar) Temple, Tiruppazhuvur (Keezhapazhuvur)
The banyan-tree shrine of Pazhuvur on the Kollidam, seat of the Pazhuvettaraiyar chiefs who served the Cholas. Parashurama is said to have done penance here. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSemmeninathar (Karumbeswarar) Temple, Tirukkanur
A lonely shrine on the Kollidam bank where Shiva appeared to the Devi as a red flame. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingAmravaneswarar Temple, Tirumanthurai (Lalgudi)
The mango-grove shrine near Lalgudi, where Shiva and Parvati came as a deer’s parents to feed a hungry fawn. Sambandar sang it.
StandingAdimooleswarar Temple, Tiruppatrurai (Tiruppalathurai)
The milk-ford near Tiruvanaikaval, where a Chola king found a linga in a mound that gushed milk. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMaragathachaleswarar Temple, Tiruveengoimalai
The emerald hill on the north bank of the Kaveri, last of the Tevaram temples north of the river, where Agastya worshipped as a fly. Sambandar sang it.
StandingRatnagireeswarar Temple, Vatpokki (Ayyarmalai)
The ruby hill of Ayyarmalai near Kulithalai, where a king raised his sword at the Lord and received a gem. Appar sang it.
StandingKadambavaneswarar Temple, Kadambanthurai (Kulithalai)
The Kadamba-grove temple on the Kaveri at Kulithalai, which faces north like Kashi Vishwanath, with the Sapta Kanyas standing behind the linga. Appar sang it.
StandingDarukavaneswarar (Paraithurainathar) Temple, Tirupparaithurai
The temple of the Darukavana leela on the wide Kaveri west of Tiruchirappalli, where the Aippasi bathing season opens. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingPanchavarneswarar Temple, Tirumukkeeswaram (Uraiyur)
The Shiva temple of Uraiyur, the old Chola capital, where the Lord showed five colours to a sage and a cock put an elephant to flight. Sambandar sang it.
StandingNithyasundareswarar Temple, Tirunedungalam
A temple east of Tiruchirappalli whose sanctum carries two vimanas, for Shiva and Shakti together. Sambandar’s hymn here is sung to clear troubles away.
StandingAgneeswarar (Theeyadiyappar) Temple, Mela Tirukkattuppalli
The western Tirukattupalli, where the Kudamurutti leaves the Kaveri and Agni was freed of his curse. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingAtmanatheswarar Temple, Tiruvalampozhil
A west-facing village temple near Tiruvaiyaru, which Appar called Parambaikudi. Appar sang it.
StandingPushpavananathar Temple, Tiruppoonthuruthi
The sixth of Tiruvaiyaru’s Saptasthanam shrines, where Appar lived in a matha, and where he carried the young Sambandar’s palanquin. Appar sang it in three hymns.
StandingOdhanavaneswarar (Chotruthurainathar) Temple, Tiruchotruthurai
The ford of cooked rice on the Kudamurutti, where Shiva gave a devotee a vessel that never emptied in a famine. Sung by Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar.
StandingVedapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvedikudi
The abode of the Vedas near Tiruvaiyaru, where the four Vedas did tapas and Vinayaka leans in to listen. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingVasishteswarar Temple, Thenkudi Thittai
The raised mound north of Thanjavur that stood above the pralaya waters, where Maharshi Vasishtha worshipped and Guru stands in his own shrine. Sambandar sang it.
StandingChakravakeswarar Temple, Tiruchakrappalli (Chakkarappalli, Ayyampettai)
The first of the Sapta Mangai shrines near Ayyampettai, where Bhagwan Vishnu received the Sudarshana chakra. Sambandar sang it, and an inscription here records the passing of Sundara Chola.
StandingPalaivananathar Temple, Tiruppalaithurai (Papanasam)
The Papanasam temple beside the Thanjavur–Kumbakonam highway, with a great round granary of the Nayaka age in its court. Appar sang it.
StandingKalyanasundareswarar (Panchavarneswarar) Temple, Tirunallur
The southern Kailasa on a raised hillock, where Amarneethi Nayanar was weighed against a loincloth and Shiva placed his feet on Appar’s head. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingPasupatheeswarar Temple, Avur Pasupatheeswaram
The cow’s town near Kumbakonam, a raised madakkoil where Kamadhenu was freed of a curse, with two Devis and five Bhairavas. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSivakozhundeeswarar Temple, Shakthimutram
The shrine near Patteeswaram where the Devi embraced the Lord, who stood before her as a pillar of fire, and where Appar asked for the Lord’s feet. Appar sang it.
StandingSomanathar Temple and Vadathali, Pazhaiyarai
Pazhaiyarai was a Chola royal town, and its old Shiva shrines are sung together in one hymn of Appar. Here Appar sat in fast until a hidden linga was given back to worship.
StandingApathsahayeswarar Temple, Aduthurai (Then Kurangaduthurai)
The southern monkey-ford, where Sugriva hid from Vali and the Lord came to his rescue. Sambandar and Appar sang it, and Sembiyan Mahadevi rebuilt it in granite.
StandingNeelakandeswarar Temple, Tiruneelakkudi
The Lord who held the halahala in His throat, whose rough linga drinks every drop of the sesame oil poured on it. Appar sang it after being thrown into the sea tied to a stone.
StandingVaikalnathar Temple, Tiruvaikal Madakkoyil
A small maadakoil in a village of three Shiva temples, whose whole shrine stands on a raised platform. Sambandar sang it and named Kochengat Chola as its builder.
StandingKokileswarar Temple, Tirukkozhambam
Where a cursed vidyadhara worshipped as a cuckoo, and the hoof of Parvati in cow form uncovered the linga. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingUkthavedeeswarar Temple, Tiruthuruthi (Kuthalam)
The island shrine of the Kaveri where Shiva wed Parvati exactly as He had promised, and where Sundarar bathed and was made whole. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingVedapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvazhundur (Therazhundur)
The Shiva temple of the village where a chariot sank before Agastya, across the street from the Divya Desam of Amaruviappan. Sambandar sang it.
StandingUchiravaneswarar (Thuraikattum Vallalar) Temple, Tiruvilanagar
The Lord who showed the ford: when the Kaveri was in flood, a hunter led Sambandar across and vanished. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSwarnapureeswarar Temple, Tiruchemponpalli (Sembanarkoil)
The golden-hall shrine where Dakshayani did tapas amid five fires after Daksha’s yagna. Appar sang it twice and Sambandar once.
StandingNatrunaiyappar Temple, Tirunanipalli (Punjai)
The village of Sambandar’s mother, where the child saint sang from his father’s shoulders and the dry land turned green. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingValampurinathar Temple, Tiruvalampuram (Melaperumpallam)
Where the rishi Heranda rose after giving his life to bring the Kaveri back from the underworld. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingSankaranyeswarar Temple, Tiruthalaichangadu
The conch-forest shrine where Bhagwan Vishnu received the Panchajanya, beside the Divya Desam of Nanmathiya Perumal. Sambandar sang it.
StandingThanthondreeswarar Temple, Akkur
The self-born Lord who came as the thousandth guest at a king’s feeding, and the home of Sirappuli Nayanar. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingBrahmapureeswarar Temple, Tirukkadavur Mayanam (Tirumayanam)
One of the Mayana shrines, where Shiva turned Brahma to ash at the end of a kalpa and gave him life again. Its well supplies the abhishekam water of Amritaghateswarar at Thirukadaiyur, and all three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingTirumeni Azhagar (Sundareswarar) Temple, Tiruvettakudi
The seaside shrine of Shiva as the hunter who met Arjuna, whose festival image goes down to the sea on Masi Magam with the fisherfolk. Sambandar sang it.
StandingParvatheeswarar Temple, Tiruthelicheri (Kovilpathu, Karaikal)
A Karaikal shrine of the sun’s tank, where Vinayakar called Sambandar back to sing. Sambandar’s hymn is in the second Tirumurai.
StandingYazhmurinathar Temple, Dharmapuram (Karaikal)
The shrine of the broken yazh, where Sambandar sang music no instrument could hold. Yama worshipped here, and the town is named Dharmapuram for him.
StandingAiravateswarar Temple, Tirukkottaram (Tirukottaru)
Where Indra’s white elephant, cursed by Durvasa, worshipped on its long road back; a beehive has lived in the sanctum for as long as anyone remembers. Sambandar sang it twice.
StandingBrahmapureeswarar Temple, Ambar Perunthirukkoyil
The great hill-temple of Ambar, where Brahma, cursed to remain a swan, bathed in the tank and was restored. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMahakalanathar Temple, Ambar Makalam (Tirumakalam)
One of the three Makalams, with Ujjain and Irumbai, where Shiva came in a lowly guise to receive the offering at Somasimara Nayanar’s yagna. Sambandar sang it three times.
StandingMathimukteeswarar Temple, Tilatharpanapuri (Sethalapathi)
Tilatharpanapuri, the town of the sesame offering, where Rama and Lakshmana gave water and sesame for Dasharatha and Jatayu. Pitru rites may be done here on any day, and Sambandar sang it.
StandingSukshmapureeswarar (Mangaleswarar) Temple, Sirukudi
A linga no bigger than a handful of sand, shaped by Parvati herself; abhishekam is done to the Devi instead. Sambandar sang it.
StandingAgnipureeswarar Temple, Tiruvanniyur
Where Agni, barred from every yagna after Daksha’s sacrifice, worshipped with vanni leaves and was freed. Appar sang it.
StandingSarguneswarar Temple, Tirukkaruvili Kottittai (Karuveli)
Karuvili, no more womb: the shrine where worship is held to end rebirth. Appar sang it.
StandingSivanandeswarar Temple, Tiruppenuperunthurai (Tiruppanthurai)
Where Murugan, troubled at having imprisoned Brahma over the meaning of Om, found peace; He stands here in silent meditation. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSiddhanatheswarar Temple, Tirunaraiyur (Siddheecharam)
The Shiva temple of Nachiyar Koil, where Lakshmi was born to the sage Medhavi and Shiva and Parvati gave her in marriage to Vishnu. Sambandar sang it three times and Sundarar once.
StandingSwarnapureeswarar (Padikasunathar) Temple, Arisirkaraiputhur (Azhagaputhur)
Where the Lord left a gold coin on the step each day for old Pugazhthunai Nayanar through a famine. All three Tevaram singers sang it.
StandingSivagurunathar Temple, Sivapuram
Ground so holy that Sambandar would not walk on it and rolled round the temple instead; home of the Sivapuram Nataraja, the bronze that was stolen and brought home. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingAmirthakalasanathar Temple, Kalayanallur (Sakkottai)
Where the middle of Brahma’s pot of creation came to rest after the deluge; one of the Kumbakonam Sapta Sthanam and Mahamaham temples. Sundarar sang it.
StandingSargunalingeswarar Temple, Tirukkarukkudi (Marudhanallur)
A sand linga that Shri Rama shaped with His own hands when Hanuman was late with the stone one. Sambandar sang it.
StandingMadhuvaneswarar Temple, Nannilam
The great temple of Nannilam, where the devas hid as honeybees in the sanctum, and bees still live. Sundarar sang it and named Kochengat Chola as its builder.
StandingPasupatheeswarar Temple, Tirukondeeswaram
A moated shrine whose small linga is split by the horn of Parvati in cow form; a three-headed Jvaradeva on a pillar is prayed to for fevers. Appar sang it twice.
StandingSoundareswarar Temple, Tiruppanaiyur
The palmyra village where the boy Karikala Chola hid under Vinayakar’s protection, and where Shiva danced before Sundarar at the boundary. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingVeeratteswarar Temple, Tiruvirkudi
One of the eight Veerattanams, where Shiva destroyed the asura Jalandhara with a disc drawn by His toe. Tulasi is the sacred tree, and Sambandar sang it.
StandingVarthamaneeswarar Shrine, Tiruppugalur Varthamaneeswaram
A Tevaram shrine inside the great Tiruppugalur temple, sung only by Sambandar, whose hymn praises Muruga Nayanar’s flowers.
StandingRamanathar Temple, Ramanatheeswaram (Tirukkannapuram)
Where Shri Rama, returning from Lanka, worshipped a swayambhu linga and the Devi drew Nandi aside to let Him in. Sambandar sang it.
StandingTiruppayatrunathar Temple, Tiruppayatrur (Tiruppayathangudi)
Where a devotee’s sacks of pepper became green gram long enough to pass the toll and turned back to pepper. Appar sang it.
StandingRatnagireeswarar (Manikkavannar) Temple, Tirumarugal
Where Sambandar sang a young merchant back to life from snakebite and married him to the girl who mourned him. Appar sang it once and Sambandar twice.
StandingAyavantheeswarar Temple, Tiruchathamangai (Seeyathamangai)
Ayavanthi, the home of Tiru Neelanakka Nayanar, where the linga is covered in blister-like marks. Sambandar sang it.
StandingKediliappar (Akshayalingeswarar) Temple, Keezhvelur
The southern Badari forest, where Murugan worshipped to be freed of the sin of war after slaying Surapadman, and Nataraja dances with the right foot raised. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingDevapureeswarar Temple, Tiruthevur (Thevur)
The town of the devas, where Kubera won back his treasures and a banana grows on bare rock beside the sanctum. Sambandar sang it twice.
StandingMukkonanathar (Trinetranathar) Temple, Palliyin Mukkudal
Kuruvi Rameswaram, the bird’s Rameswaram, where Jatayu was given a tank that holds the merit of Kashi and Setu together. Appar sang it.
StandingAchaleswarar Shrine, Arur Araneri (Tiruvarur)
A separate Tevaram shrine in the second court of the Tiruvarur temple, where Naminandi Adigal lit the lamps with water. Appar sang it twice.
StandingThoovainathar Temple, Arur Paravaiyunmandali (Tiruvarur)
The Durvasa temple on Tiruvarur’s East Car Street, where Sundarar bathed and the sight of his second eye came back. Sundarar sang it.
StandingPatanjali Manoharar Temple, Tiruvilamar (Vilamal)
Where Patanjali and Vyaghrapada were shown the dancing feet of Shiva; His feet are worshipped here as the Rudra Pada. Sambandar sang it.
StandingKaraveeranathar Temple, Tirukkaraveeram
The shrine of the karaveeram tree, where Sambandar arrived after dark, slept, and sang at dawn. Gautama’s samadhi tree is prayed at for marriage.
StandingAbhimukteeswarar Temple, Tirupperuvelur (Manakkal Ayyampet)
A raised maadakoil where Murugan worshipped and received the vel, laid out in the Somaskanda order. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingNarthanapureeswarar Temple, Tiruthalaiyalangadu
Where Shiva danced on Muyalakan after humbling the Daruka sages, beside a Sangam battlefield. Appar sang it.
StandingKoneswarar Temple, Tirukkudavayil (Kudavasal)
Kudavayil, the mouth of the pot: where the neck of the vessel of creation fell after the deluge, and where Garuda found the Lord in an anthill. Sambandar sang it twice.
StandingSaraparameswarar (Senneriyappar) Temple, Tirucherai
The Shiva temple of Tirucherai, with the debt-releasing linga of Markandeya and a Bhairava sung by Appar in a hymn of his own. Appar sang it twice and Sambandar once.
StandingGnanaparameswarar Temple, Tirunallur Mayanam (Tirumeignanam)
Nallur Mayanam, one of the Mayana shrines of the Tevaram, worshipped by the four Vedas; a Chola king, likely Aditya I, kneels in stone on the sanctum wall. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSwarnapureeswarar Temple, Kaduvaikaraiputhur (Andankoil)
The temple on the Kaduvai river that a minister built from stones begged of passers-by, and for which he lost his head and was given back his life. Appar sang it.
StandingPathaleeswarar Temple, Aradaipperumpazhi (Haridwaramangalam)
Where Bhagwan Vishnu as Varaha bored into the earth looking for Shiva’s feet; one of the five Pancha Aranya shrines. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSakshinathar Temple, Avalivanallur
She is not she, she is the one: where Shiva stood witness for a wife her own husband did not know. Sambandar and Sundarar sang it.
StandingParidhiyappar (Bhaskareswarar) Temple, Paridhiniyamam (Paruthiappar Koil)
The shrine where Surya, the sun, worshipped Shiva; paridhi is the sun, and the village is named after the temple. Sambandar sang it.
StandingVenni Karumbeswarar Temple, Tiruvenniyur (Koil Venni)
A linga shaped like a bundle of sugarcane stems, by the field where Karikala Chola won the battle of Venni. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingChathuranga Vallabhanathar (Pushpavananathar) Temple, Tiruppoovanur
The Lord who won the Devi’s hand at chess. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingNaganathar Temple, Tiruppathaleeswaram (Pamani)
Pathaleeswaram, the Lord of the serpent world, near Mannargudi; people come to the Naga tirtham for relief from serpent afflictions. Sambandar sang it.
StandingParijatavaneswarar (Kalarmulainathar) Temple, Tirukkalar
Durvasa’s grove of parijata trees, where Shiva danced for the sage who had missed the dance at Chidambaram. Sambandar sang it.
StandingPonvaithanathar Temple, Tiruchitremam (Sithaimoor)
Ponvaithanathar means the Lord who placed gold. Sambandar sang this small Chola shrine of the delta, the 106th Tevaram temple south of the Kaveri.
StandingMantrapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvusathanam (Kovilur)
Tiruvusathanam, now Kovilur near Muthupettai, is the shrine where Shri Rama and the vanara chiefs are said to have taken counsel before the crossing to Lanka. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSargunanathar Temple, Idumbavanam
Idumbavanam takes its name from Idumban, who worshipped Shiva here and was freed. Devotees come to be rid of the fear of death, for Yama too is said to have prayed here.
StandingKarpaganathar Temple, Kadikkulam (Karpaganatharkulam)
Karpagam is the wish-granting tree, and the Lord of Kadikkulam is named for it. Sambandar sang the shrine; the village is now called after the deity, Karpaganatharkulam.
StandingNeenerinathar Temple, Tiruthandalai Neeneri (Thandalaicheri)
One of the raised maadakkoil shrines that the Periya Puranam credits to Kochengat Chola. Here, says the katha, the stone Nandi ate the king’s garland of grass and his disease left him.
StandingKozhundeeswarar Temple, Kottur
Kottur, on the Mannargudi–Thiruthuraipoondi road, keeps a west-facing linga and a Devi whose name means she of honeyed speech. Sambandar sang it.
StandingVanduranathar Temple, Tiruvandurai (Vendurai)
Vandu is a bee. The sage Bhringi, who would circle only Shiva and not the Devi, took the form of a bee here to keep up his worship. Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingVilvaranyeswarar Temple, Tirukkollampudur
The bilva-forest shrine, one of the five Pancha Aranya temples of the Kaveri delta. Here Sambandar sang a padigam and the boat carrying him and his devotees crossed the flooded river.
StandingJagadeeswarar Temple, Tiruppereyil (Ogaiperaiyur)
Pereyil, the great fortress, is remembered as an outpost guarding Tiruvarur. Appar sang the Lord of the World here.
StandingAgneeswarar Temple, Tirukkollikkadu
Agni, the fire, worshipped Shiva here, and the place is the forest of the firebrand. Families troubled by Shani come to the separate shrine of Pongu Saneeswarar.
StandingVellimalainathar Temple, Tiruthengur (Thiruthangur)
Vellimalai is the silver mountain, Kailasa. Tiruthengur, the coconut town, keeps the Lord of Kailasa in a small delta shrine sung by Sambandar.
StandingNellivananathar Temple, Tirunellikka
Nelli is the amla, and this was a grove of amla trees. The temple’s katha says Parvati was born here as a Chola princess and married Shiva.
StandingRatnapureeswarar (Manikkavannar) Temple, Tirunattiyathankudi
Birthplace of Kotpuli Nayanar, the Chola general whose two daughters Sundarar took as his own. Sundarar sang this shrine and called himself the father of Singadi.
StandingKannayiranathar Temple, Tirukkarayil (Thirukaravasal)
One of the seven Saptha Vidanga shrines of Thyagaraja, where the processional Lord is Adi Vidangar. Sambandar sang it, and devotees with eye trouble come for the oil of the abhishekam.
StandingNadutariappar Temple, Tirukkanrappur (Kovil Kannapur)
The Lord who came out of a calf’s tethering peg. The axe mark of the katha is still shown on the linga. Appar sang the shrine.
StandingManathunainathar Temple, Tiruvalivalam
Manathunainathar is the Lord who keeps the mind company. Sambandar and Appar sang this raised maadakkoil, named for the valiyan, the black drongo said to have worshipped here.
StandingKaichineswarar Temple, Tirukkaichinam (Kachanam)
Kai is the hand. Indra shaped a linga of sand here, and when he lifted it the print of his hand stayed on it. Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingBrahmapureeswarar Temple, Tirukkolili (Thirukkuvalai)
All three Tevaram saints sang Tirukkolili. Here Sundarar asked Shiva to carry a hill of paddy to his home in Tiruvarur, and the nine grahas stand in one line facing the Lord.
StandingVaimoornathar Temple, Tiruvaimur
Shiva called Appar in a dream: come, we are at Vaimur. Appar and Sambandar both sang this Vidanga shrine near Tirukkuvalai.
StandingAgastheeswarar Temple, Agathiyanpalli
Where Agastya, sent south to balance the earth at Shiva’s wedding, was shown the wedding form. Sambandar sang the shrine, 3 km from Vedaranyam.
StandingAmritaghateswarar (Kodi Kuzhagar) Temple, Kodikkarai
At the very tip of the Tamil coast, where a drop of amrita fell from the pot and became a linga. Sundarar came here with Cheraman Perumal and grieved that the Lord stood alone by the sea.
StandingAgastheeswarar Temple, Kiliyanur (Tirukkiliyannavur)
A quiet Agastya shrine on the Tindivanam–Puducherry road, sung by Sambandar in a padigam of the Third Tirumurai.
StandingPunniyakodiyappar Temple, Tiruvidaivai (Tiruvidaivasal)
The Tevaram temple whose hymn was found on its own wall. Sambandar’s padigam on Tiruvidaivai was read from a stone inscription in 1917, and the count of sung shrines grew from 274 to 275.
StandingTirumetraleeswarar Temple, Kachi Metrali, Kanchipuram
One of five Tevaram shrines inside Kanchipuram. A second linga here, Othavurugeesar, is the Lord who melted on hearing a hymn, and the linga bears the form of Vishnu’s feet.
StandingOnakantheeswarar Temple, Onakanthanthali, Kanchipuram
Here Sundarar sang to Shiva for gold, and the tamarinds of the tree are said to have turned to gold. Two asura captains, Onan and Kanthan, gave the shrine its name.
StandingAnekathangavadeswarar Temple, Kachi Anekathangavadam, Kanchipuram
Anekapa is the elephant, the one who drinks with two mouths. Vinayaka himself set up and worshipped this linga, and Sundarar sang it. The name Kachi marks it off from the Anekathangavadam of the Himalaya.
StandingSathyanatheswarar Temple, Kachi Nerikkaraikkadu (Thirukalimedu), Kanchipuram
The forest of karai shrubs in north-east Kanchipuram where Budha, the planet Mercury, did tapas and was made one of the nine grahas. Sambandar sang it.
StandingValeeswarar Temple, Kuranganilmuttam
The village name holds three worshippers: kurangu, the monkey Vali; anil, the squirrel Indra; muttam, the crow Yama. Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingTirumagaraleeswarar Temple, Tirumagaral
The Lord who appeared to a Chola king as a golden monitor lizard and vanished into an anthill; the linga is said to have the shape of the lizard’s tail. Sambandar sang his Vinai Theerkum padigam here.
StandingTalapureeswarar Temple, Tiruppanangadu (Vanparthan Panangattur)
The palm-forest shrine near Kanchipuram with two Lords and two Devis side by side. Sundarar sang it.
StandingManikandeswarar Temple, Tirumalperu (Thirumalpur)
Tirumal is Vishnu and peru is what he gained: here, says the temple’s katha, Bhagwan Vishnu worshipped Shiva with a thousand lotuses and offered his own eye, and received the Sudarshana chakra. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingDeivanayakeswarar (Chandrasekarar) Temple, Ilambayankottur
Shiva stopped the boy Sambandar on the road here, first as a child, then as an old man, then as a white cow that walked into the temple. Sambandar followed and sang.
StandingTripurantakar Temple, Tiruvirkolam (Kuvam)
Vil is the bow: here Shiva took up Mount Meru as his bow against the three cities. The swayambhu linga is never touched, even by the priests, and is bathed only in water from the Kuvam river.
StandingVaseeswarar Temple, Tiruppasur
Pasu is bamboo, and the linga was found in a bamboo thicket where a cow gave her milk; the cut of the digging tool, the vasi, is still on it. Appar and Sambandar sang the shrine.
RebuiltOondreeswarar Temple, Tiruvenpakkam (Poondi)
Sundarar came here blind and asked for his sight; Shiva gave him a walking staff instead, and the angry saint flung it away and broke the horn of Nandi. The old temple now lies under the Poondi reservoir.
StandingSivanandeswarar Temple, Tirukkallil (Thirukandalam)
A Tondai village shrine where Dakshinamurthy sits with the Devi beside him, a rare form called Sakti Dakshinamurthy. Sambandar sang it.
StandingGnanapureeswarar Temple, Tiruvidaichuram (Tiruvadisoolam)
Idaichuram, the pass between the hills, now Tiruvadisoolam near Chengalpattu. Sambandar sang it; the sage Gautama and Sanatkumara are said to have worshipped here.
StandingAtcheeswarar Temple, Achirupakkam (Acharapakkam)
Achu is the axle: here the axle of Shiva’s chariot broke as he rode against the three cities, because Ganesha had not been worshipped first. Sambandar sang the shrine.
StandingArasaleeswarar Temple, Tiru Arasili (Ozhindiyapattu)
Arasu is the peepal. Shiva appeared to the sage Vamadeva from a peepal tree here, and the small swayambhu linga carries the scar of a king’s arrow. Pradosham worship here is especially honoured.
StandingMahakaleswarar Temple, Irumbai Makalam
One of the Makalam shrines of the Tevaram, near Puducherry, where the top of the swayambhu linga is cracked in three and one piece has fallen away. Sambandar sang it.
StandingAppudaiyar Temple, Tiruvappanur (Sellur, Madurai)
The Tevaram shrine across the Vaigai from the Meenakshi temple, where the Lord turned river sand into rice. Sambandar sang it.
StandingVriddhapureeswarar (Pazhampathinathar) Temple, Tiruppunavayil
A Pandya-country shrine by the sea, sung by Sambandar and Sundarar. Fourteen lingas are worshipped inside, and the Vedas are said to have worshipped here.
StandingTheerthapureeswarar Temple, Tirunelvayil Arathurai (Tiruvattathurai)
Where Shiva gave the child Sambandar a palanquin, a parasol and trumpets of pearl, so that his small feet need not walk the long roads. All three Tevaram saints sang it.
StandingSudarkozhundeeswarar (Pralayakaleswarar) Temple, Pennagadam (Pennadam)
The Thoongaanai Maadam, the shrine shaped like a sleeping elephant. Here Appar prayed for and received the marks of the trident and the bull on his shoulders. Appar and Sambandar sang it.
StandingNarthana Vallabeswarar Temple, Tirukkoodalaiyatrur
At the meeting of the Manimuktha and the Vellar, Shiva walked ahead of Sundarar as an old brahmin to show him the road, and vanished. Sundarar sang that he had not known the wonder.
StandingNeelakandeswarar (Thirukumaresar) Temple, Erukkathampuliyur (Rajendrapattinam)
Birthplace of Tiruneelakanta Yazhpanar, the musician who played the yazh beside Sambandar as he sang. Sambandar sang this shrine of the white erukku forest.
StandingSivakozhundeeswarar Temple, Tiruthinainagar (Theerthanagiri)
Thinai is millet: Tiruthinainagar, now Theerthanagiri near Cuddalore, was sung by Sundarar. The Devi is Oppila Nayaki, she who has no equal.
StandingMangalapureeswarar Temple, Tiruchopuram (Thyagavalli)
A shrine by the sea south of Cuddalore where, besides the linga, Shiva and the Devi sit with Ganesha and Murugan on their laps. Sambandar sang it.
StandingSwarnakadeswarar Temple, Tirunelvennai (Neivanai)
Swarnaghata is a pot of gold, and the Lord here is remembered as the one who gave a golden pot. Sambandar sang Tirunelvennai.
StandingAtulyanatheswarar (Oppillamaneeswarar) Temple, Arakandanallur (Araiyani Nallur)
The temple on the granite hill above the Pennai, facing Tirukkoyilur. Sambandar sang it, and from here, the temple says, he saw the hill of Arunachala. In 1896 the young Ramana Maharshi sat in this temple on his way to Tiruvannamalai.
StandingMarundeeswarar (Idaiyatrunathar) Temple, Tiruvidaiyaru (T. Edaiyar)
Idaiyaru, between the rivers, on the Thenpennai near Tiruvennainallur. Sundarar sang it; Shuka Brahmarishi is said to have done tapas here.
StandingSishtagurunathar Temple, Tiruthuraiyur
Here Sundarar asked Shiva to grant him the way of tapas, and the Lord became his guru. Sishtagurunathar means the Lord who is teacher to his disciple.
StandingVadukeeswarar (Panchanadeeswarar) Temple, Vadugur (Tiruvandarkoil)
A Chola stone temple on the highway west of Puducherry, now in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India. Sambandar sang Vadugur.
StandingVamanapureeswarar Temple, Tirumanikuzhi
Mani is the young brahmachari, Vamana, and kuzhi the hollow: the temple’s katha ties the place to Vamana and Mahabali. Sambandar sang it, on the Kedilam near Cuddalore.
StandingSivalokanathar Temple, Tirumundeeswaram (Gramam)
Appar sang Tirumundeeswaram, and the Cholas made it a stone temple in Parantaka’s reign. Its inscriptions carry the story of the Chola prince Rajaditya, who fell at Takkolam.
StandingPanankatteeswarar (Netroddharaka Swami) Temple, Puravar Panangattur (Panaiyapuram)
The palm-forest shrine beside the Chennai–Villupuram highway, rebuilt in stone by Rajendra Chola I. Sambandar sang it, and the highway was later turned aside to spare it.
StandingKalyana Vikirthanathar Temple, Venjamakoodal (Venjamangudalur)
One of the seven Kongu Nadu shrines of the Tevaram, on the Kudaganaru near Karur. Shiva came to Sundarar here as an old man and gave him gold.
StandingGaurikund (Anekathangavadam of the Tevaram)
The last halt before the walk to Kedarnath, where Mata Parvati did tapas to win Mahadev. Tamil tradition identifies it with Anekathangavadam, one of the Himalayan shrines Sambandar sang.
StandingPura Besakih
The mother temple of Bali, a complex of more than twenty temples climbing the slope of Gunung Agung, the island’s holiest mountain.
StandingPura Luhur Uluwatu
A cliff temple on the south-west tip of Bali, set about 70 metres above the Indian Ocean, one of the six great temples that guard the island.
StandingMuktinath
A Vishnu tirtha at 3,710 metres below the Thorong La pass, one of the 108 Divya Desams and sacred to Buddhists as well.
RebuiltKoneswaram, Trincomalee
The Shiva temple on Swami Rock at Trincomalee, sung by the Nayanars, razed by the Portuguese in 1622 and rebuilt on the same cliff between 1952 and 1963.
RebuiltMunneswaram Temple
One of the five ancient Ishwarams of Lanka, the Shiva temples that ring the island. The local katha says Shri Rama worshipped Mahadev here on his way home after the war with Ravana.
StandingHinglaj Mata
A Shakti Peetha in a cave by the Hingol river, where the Peetha lists say the crown of Sati’s head fell. It is the westernmost of the great Devi tirthas and still draws Hindus from all over Pakistan every spring.
StandingChandranath Temple, Sitakunda
A Shiva temple on the summit of Chandranath hill above Sitakunda, near the Chattala Shakti Peetha of Devi Bhavani. Its Shivaratri mela is the biggest Hindu fair in Bangladesh.
StandingPeshawar (Purushapura)
Purushapura, the city at the foot of the Khyber, was Kanishka’s capital and later a city of the Hindu Shahis, before whose walls Jayapala fell to Mahmud in 1001. Hari Singh Nalwa governed it for the Sikh empire in the 1830s.
StandingKallanai (Grand Anicut)
The stone weir across the Kaveri below Srirangam, credited to the Chola king Karikala, that turns the river’s water into the canals of the Thanjavur delta. Among the oldest water works in the world still in use, it gave the British engineer Arthur Cotton his model.
StandingJambukeswarar Temple, Thiruvanaikaval
The water sthala of the Pancha Bhuta lingas, on Srirangam island, where a spring rises in the sanctum around the linga. An elephant and a spider worshipped Shiva here.
StandingKanchipuram, city of learning
One of the seven Mokshapuris and the Pallava capital, whose ghatika, a college of Vedic learning, drew students from across the south. Shaiva, Vaishnava, Jain and Buddhist teachers all taught here.
StandingBanavasi
One of the oldest towns of Karnataka, on the Varada river, and capital of the Kadambas, the first great kingdom to rise from the Kannada country itself. Its Madhukeshvara temple has been in worship for well over a thousand years.
StandingArachalur
A Kongu village near Erode with a rock shelter on Nagamalai hill bearing one of the last Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, with rows of syllables that many read as notation for music or dance. Tamil Nadu also remembers it as a place where Dheeran Chinnamalai fought the Company in 1804.
RuinedMỹ Sơn
The holy valley of the Cham kings, where for some nine centuries they built brick temples to Shiva Bhadreshvara, the guardian of their kingdom.
StandingPashupatinath
The holiest Shiva temple of Nepal, on the Bagmati in Kathmandu, where a four-faced linga of Pashupati is worshipped by priests from Karnataka.
StandingUdayagiri Caves, Vidisha
Twenty rock-cut shrines in a sandstone hill near Vidisha, the oldest securely dated Hindu cave temples. The great Varaha panel of Cave 5 shows Vishnu lifting Bhudevi out of the ocean.
StandingKankali Devi Temple, Tigawa
A flat-roofed stone shrine with a four-pillared porch, one of the oldest surviving Hindu temples, showing the temple form at its first steps. It is the only one left standing of some three dozen at Tigawa.
StandingRamtek (Ramagiri)
The hill near Nagpur where, by tradition, Rama rested during the vanavasa, crowned by a fort-temple of Rama and some of the oldest Vakataka temples in Bharat.
ExcavatedNalanda Mahavihara
For some seven centuries the greatest seat of learning in Asia, with thousands of monks and teachers, libraries and royal grants from Kanauj to Sumatra. It was ruined in the raids on Bihar around 1200 and its brick courts were dug out from 1915.
StandingMandsaur (Dashapura)
Old Dashapura of western Malwa, where a guild of silk weavers built a Sun temple in 436 CE, and where Yashodharman raised victory pillars after defeating the Huna Mihirakula. Today it is best known for its eight-faced Shivalinga of Pashupatinath, found in the Shivna river.
StandingRamalingeswara Temple, Keesaragutta
A hill temple on the edge of Hyderabad where, the temple says, Shri Rama installed a linga and Hanuman, coming late with lingas from Kashi, scattered them over the hill. The hill also holds the excavated remains of a Vishnukundina-period settlement.
StandingHalasi (Palashika)
The Palashika of the early Kadamba kings, from which they issued copper-plate grants to Jain monks in the fifth century. Later a seat of the Goa Kadambas, it keeps the Varaha-Narasimha temple with its inscription of 1169.
RuinedBhitargaon Brick Temple
The oldest surviving brick temple of the Hindus with a tall shikhara, built under the Guptas and covered with terracotta panels.
RuinedWat Phou (Vat Phou)
A Khmer Shiva temple climbing the slope of a mountain whose summit looks like a linga, which the inscriptions call Lingaparvata. A spring at the top once poured its water over the linga in the sanctuary.
StandingTalagunda
An old agrahara village where a stone pillar in front of the Pranaveshvara temple tells how Mayurasharma, a Brahmin student, founded the Kadamba kingdom. It is one of the finest early Sanskrit inscriptions of Karnataka.
RuinedBhitari, Pillar of Skandagupta
A village near Saidpur where a sandstone pillar bears Skandagupta’s inscription on his victory over the Hunas and his night on the bare ground. The same site gave a royal seal with the Gupta line down to Kumaragupta III.
RebuiltChangu Narayan
A Vishnu temple on a ridge above the Kathmandu valley, holding the oldest dated inscription of Nepal, set up by the Licchavi king Manadeva I in 464 CE.
RuinedEran (Airikina)
A bend of the Bina river in Sagar district where the Guptas and their governors set up a Garuda pillar, Vishnu temples and a colossal stone Varaha covered with rishis. An inscription here of 510 CE is the earliest dated record of a sati.
StandingParvati Temple, Nachna-Kuthara
One of the oldest stone temples in central India, a square shrine with an upper storey, a covered ambulatory and pierced stone windows. Nachna has some of the earliest Ramayana scenes carved in stone.
RuinedDashavatara Temple, Deogarh
A Gupta stone temple of Vishnu on the Betwa, one of the earliest Hindu temples built to the panchayatana plan. Its three relief panels are among the masterpieces of Indian sculpture.
StandingMahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya
The place under the Bodhi tree where Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment, the holiest site of the Buddhist world. Hindus who count the Buddha among Vishnu’s avatars come here too, and Hindu monks of the Giri order kept the temple for centuries.
StandingBadami (Vatapi)
Vatapi, capital of the Chalukyas, set in red sandstone cliffs around the Agastya lake. Its four cave temples hold some of the earliest dated Hindu sculpture in the Deccan.
StandingSrinagar (Pravarapura)
The city of Shri, Lakshmi, on the Vitasta. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini records its founding by Pravarasena II; it was the seat of Kashmir’s Hindu kings, then of sultans, Mughals, Afghans, Sikhs and the Dogras.
RuinedDa Parbatia Temple Ruins, Tezpur
The oldest surviving piece of temple art in Assam: a carved stone doorframe of about the 6th century, with Ganga and Yamuna standing at its foot, found in a village west of Tezpur.
RuinedDevrani and Jethani Temples, Tala
Two ruined Shiva temples on the Maniyari river at Tala, among the oldest in Chhattisgarh. In front of Devrani was dug up a seven-foot image whose body is made of creatures, the Rudra Shiva of Tala.
RuinedElephanta Caves (Gharapuri)
A Shaiva cave temple on Gharapuri island in Mumbai harbour, with the three-faced Sadashiva, about 6 m high, at its centre. The Portuguese named the island for a stone elephant; the damage to its panels dates from their time.
RebuiltThanesar (Sthanvishvara)
The city of Sthanu, Bhagwan Shiva, on the edge of the Kurukshetra plain, where Prabhakaravardhana and his son Harsha ruled before Harsha moved to Kannauj. Mahmud of Ghazni sacked it in 1014.
StandingLakhamandal Shiva Temple
A Shiva temple on the Yamuna in Jaunsar-Bawar, where a Sanskrit inscription of a princess of the Singhapura house records the building of a temple for her husband’s merit. The ASI has found hundreds of lingas and sculptures around it.
StandingMahakuta Temples
A walled group of early Chalukya Shiva temples round a spring-fed tank in the hills near Badami, still in worship after fourteen centuries. A pillar inscription of about 600 CE records the grants of the Chalukya king Mangalesha.
RuinedAror (Alor)
The ruined capital of Sindh under the Rai kings and then Chach and his son Dahir, on a ridge near Rohri. It fell to Muhammad bin Qasim after Dahir’s death, and the river that fed it later moved away.
RuinedKannauj (Kanyakubja)
For five hundred years whoever held Kannauj on the Ganga held the claim to north India. Harsha ruled from it, the Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas fought a century-long war over it, and its fall to Muhammad Ghuri in 1194 opened the Ganga plain.
StandingRock Fort, Tiruchirappalli
An 83-metre rock over the Kaveri at Tiruchirappalli, with Shri Ganesh on the summit, the Thayumanaswamy temple halfway up, and Pallava cave shrines cut into its flanks. In the 18th century whoever held it held the Kaveri delta.
StandingMandagapattu cave temple
A hall cut into a granite boulder in a village near Villupuram, with three shrines for Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. Its inscription says it is a temple made without brick, timber, metal or mortar: the first rock-cut temple of the Tamil country.
ExcavatedVengi (Pedavegi)
The royal city between the Krishna and Godavari, seat of the Salankayanas and then of the Eastern Chalukyas, whose marriages with the Cholas joined the two houses into one.
RebuiltBhadrakali Temple, Warangal
The Devi temple on a hill between Hanamkonda and Warangal, above the Bhadrakali lake. Tradition dates it to Pulakeshin II’s victory over Vengi; the Kakatiya kings worshipped here, and it was brought back to full worship in 1950.
StandingTiruvadigai Veerattanam
One of the eight Veerattanams where Shiva overcame evil, here as the destroyer of the three cities of the asuras. At this temple Appar, sick and returned from the Jain fold, sang his first hymn and was healed.
StandingMundeshwari Devi Temple
An octagonal stone temple on Pawra hill in Kaimur district, counted among the oldest temples in Bharat where worship has never stopped. Its Devi accepts a bloodless offering: the goat brought to her is released alive.
StandingBhinmal (Bhillamala, Shrimala)
The old capital of the Gurjara country in south-west Rajasthan, where Brahmagupta finished the Brahmasphutasiddhanta in 628 CE, the book that set down rules for zero and negative numbers.
StandingAihole
A village on the Malaprabha with over a hundred temples from the 6th century on, where Chalukya builders tried out the forms of the Hindu temple. On its hill, the Meguti inscription of 634 CE records Pulakeshin II’s victory over Harsha.
DestroyedSun Temple of Multan (Mulasthana)
The great temple of Surya at Mulasthana, which Xuanzang saw with a golden image in 641 CE. The Arab governors kept it as a hostage against Hindu kings; an Ismaili ruler broke the image in the late 10th century, and nothing of it is left.
StandingGuwahati (Pragjyotishpura)
The city on the Brahmaputra below Nilachal hill, known to the Mahabharata as Pragjyotishpura, the seat of King Bhagadatta. It was the capital of Kamarupa, the prize of the Ahom–Mughal wars, and the place where Lachit Borphukan stopped the Mughal fleet in 1671.
StandingPrayagraj, Triveni Sangam
Tirtharaj, the king of tirthas, where the Ganga, the Yamuna and the unseen Sarasvati meet. The Kumbh Mela here is the largest gathering of people on earth.
StandingBudhanilkantha (Jalashayana Narayan)
A single block of black stone, about five metres long, carved as Narayan asleep on the coils of Shesha and laid in a tank of water below the Shivapuri hills. It is the largest stone sculpture of the Kathmandu valley and still under daily worship.
RebuiltThiruketheeswaram, Mannar
One of the five ancient Ishwarams of Shiva in Lanka, by the buried port of Mantai, and one of the 275 Paadal Petra Sthalams sung by the Nayanmars. The Portuguese pulled it down in 1575; it was rebuilt on its old site in 1903.
RebuiltBanashankari Temple, Cholachagudda (Badami)
The Devi of the Tilakaranya forest near Badami, kuladevi of the Chalukya kings, worshipped as Shakambhari who fed the world with vegetables in a time of famine. Her January jatra is among the largest in north Karnataka.
StandingNellaiappar–Kanthimathi Temple, Tirunelveli
A twin temple of Shiva and Devi covering about 14 acres in the heart of Tirunelveli, famous for its musical stone pillars and for the Tamra Sabha, the copper hall, one of the five halls where Nataraja dances.
StandingVaidyanatha Temple, Vaitheeswaran Koil
The temple of Shiva the physician, where Devi stands with a vessel of healing oil and where the planet Angaraka (Mars) is worshipped as one of the nine Navagraha sthalas of the Kaveri delta.
StandingAmirthaghateswarar–Abhirami Temple, Thirukadaiyur
The place where Shiva burst from the linga to strike down Yama and save the boy Markandeya. Couples come here for their sixtieth and eightieth birthday rites, praying for long life together.
StandingSuryanarayana Temple, Arasavalli
One of the few temples of Surya still in daily worship in India, where twice a year the morning sun passes through the gopuram and falls on the feet of the murti.
StandingMahanandiswara Temple, Mahanandi
A Shiva temple at the edge of the Nallamala forest whose pools are fed by springs of clear water that stays the same temperature all year. It is the chief of the Nava Nandis, nine Nandi shrines around Nandyal.
StandingParasurameswara Temple, Bhubaneswar
The best-preserved of Bhubaneswar’s early temples, raised about 650 CE. It is the first in Odisha with a separate hall, the jagamohana, in front of the sanctum, and the first in the city to show the Saptamatrikas.
StandingKailasanathar Temple, Thingalur (Chandra)
The Chandra sthala of the Navagraha circuit, a small Shiva temple in the village of Appudi Adigal, the devotee who served Appar without ever having met him.
StandingSwetharanyeswarar Temple, Thiruvenkadu (Budha)
The Budha sthala of the Navagraha circuit, a large Shiva temple of the ‘white forest’ near the old port of Poompuhar, with the rare Aghora form of Shiva and three sacred tanks.
StandingApatsahayeswarar Temple, Alangudi (Guru)
The Guru sthala of the Navagraha circuit. The village is named for the halahala poison that Shiva drank at the churning of the ocean, and Dakshinamurti here is worshipped as Guru.
StandingAgneeswarar Temple, Kanjanur (Shukra)
The Shukra sthala of the Navagraha circuit, where Agni worshipped Shiva; uniquely, Shukra here has no separate image and Shiva himself is worshipped as the graha.
StandingDharbaranyeswarar Temple, Thirunallar (Shani)
The Shani sthala of the Navagraha circuit, the most visited of the nine, where King Nala was freed from Shani’s grip after bathing in the Nala theertham.
StandingNaganathaswamy Temple, Thirunageswaram (Rahu)
The Rahu sthala of the Navagraha circuit, where the serpent-kings worshipped Shiva and Rahu is shown in human form with his two consorts.
StandingKutralanathar Temple and the Chitra Sabha, Courtallam
The Chitra Sabha, hall of pictures, among the five sabhas of Nataraja, stands a short walk from the Kutralanathar temple at the foot of the Courtallam falls; its walls are covered with painted scenes from the Puranas and Itihasa.
StandingSirkazhi and the Brahmapureeswarar Temple
The town where the child Sambandar, aged three, was fed by Mata Parvati on the steps of the temple tank and sang his first hymn. Its temple has three levels, with Shiva worshipped in three forms.
StandingPancha Rathas and Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram
Five temples, an elephant and a lion, each carved from a single outcrop of granite in the reign of Mamalla. Near them, the great relief of the Descent of the Ganga covers a whole rock face.
RebuiltJogulamba and the Nava Brahma Temples, Alampur
On the Tungabhadra near its meeting with the Krishna, nine Chalukya Shiva temples and the Shakti Peetha of Jogulamba, whose temple was destroyed in 1390 and raised again on its old site 615 years later.
ExcavatedSirpur (Shripura) and the Lakshmana Temple
Shripura on the Mahanadi, capital of Dakshina Kosala under the Panduvamshi kings. Its brick Lakshmana temple, raised by a widowed queen, is the finest brick temple surviving in India.
RuinedKatas Raj Temples
A ring of stone temples around a green spring-fed pond in the Salt Range. The pond is held to have formed from Shiva’s tears for Sati, and the Pandavas are said to have spent part of their exile here.
RuinedNagda (Nagahrada)
The lakeside town north of Udaipur where Mewar began: the boy Bappa grazed cows here and served the sage Harita, and the Guhilas ruled from here before Chittor. Its pair of carved Vishnu temples, the Sas-Bahu, still stand by the water.
RuinedAphsad
A village near Warisaliganj where Adityasena of the Later Gupta line raised a Vishnu temple and set up the stone that gives us eight generations of his family. The brick mound of the temple and a great Varaha still mark the spot.
StandingMandar Hill (Mandarachal)
The lone granite hill near Bausi that devotees hold to be Mandarachal, the mountain the devas and asuras used as the churning rod at the Samudra Manthan. A groove that winds round it is shown as the mark of Vasuki’s coils.
StandingPalembang
The river city on the Musi that was the heart of Srivijaya, the Sumatran sea power that held the Straits of Malacca for centuries. Rajendra Chola’s fleet struck it in 1025.
StandingAdi Badri Temples, Chamoli
A cluster of stone temples on the road from Karnaprayag to Ranikhet, counted first among the Panch Badri. Fourteen of the sixteen shrines survive and are protected by the ASI.
RuinedBrahmanabad
The walled city in lower Sindh that held out for months against Muhammad bin Qasim after Raja Dahir’s death in 712. Its ruins lie beside those of Mansura, the Arab capital of Sindh, and the two are often treated as one site.
StandingRajim, Rajiv Lochan Temple
The ‘Prayag of Chhattisgarh’, at the meeting of the Mahanadi, Pairi and Sondur, with the early temple of Vishnu as Rajiv Lochan, the lotus-eyed. Its Magh fair draws lakhs.
RuinedDieng Plateau temples
The oldest standing Hindu temples in Java, small stone Shiva shrines on a volcanic plateau about 2,000 metres up. The Javanese later named them after the heroes of the Mahabharata.
StandingKailasanathar Temple, Kanchipuram
The oldest standing structural temple in Kanchipuram, built in sandstone by the Pallava king Rajasimha. A Chalukya conqueror who took the city left it gifts instead of ruin.
StandingShore Temple, Mahabalipuram
Rajasimha’s granite temple on the sea at the Pallava port of Mamallapuram, with two Shiva shrines and a reclining Vishnu between them. It has faced the waves for thirteen centuries.
StandingMultan (Mulasthana)
Mulasthana, the city of the great Sun temple and, by its own tradition, of Bhakta Prahlad. It fell to Muhammad bin Qasim in 713, was taken by Mahmud of Ghazni in the early 11th century, was held by the Sikh chiefs of the Bhangi misl from 1772 to 1780, and was taken by Ranjit Singh in 1818.
RuinedParihasapura
The city that Lalitaditya Muktapida built on a plateau above the Jhelum near Srinagar, with temples of Vishnu as Parihasakeshava and Muktakeshava and a great stupa raised by his minister. Only the platforms and broken stones are left.
RuinedChittorgarh
The hill fortress of Mewar, 180 m above the plain and some 13 km round. It was besieged and taken three times, in 1303, 1535 and 1568, and each time the women chose jauhar. The Vijay Stambh still stands over it.
RebuiltEklingji, Kailashpuri
The family deity of the rulers of Mewar, 22 km north of Udaipur. The Maharanas never called themselves kings of Mewar: Ekalingji was the king, and they ruled as his Diwan.
RuinedMartand Sun Temple
The great Surya temple of Kashmir on the Mattan plateau, built by the Karkota emperor Lalitaditya Muktapida and destroyed on the orders of Sultan Sikandar in the late 14th or early 15th century.
StandingPattadakal
The coronation town of the Badami Chalukyas on the north-flowing Malaprabha, where northern and southern temple styles stand side by side. Its Virupaksha temple, raised by a queen to mark her husband’s victory over the Pallavas, is still in worship.
RuinedAnahilwad Patan
Capital of Gujarat for six centuries under the Chavdas, Chaulukyas and Vaghelas, the city of Siddharaja Jayasimha, Kumarapala and Hemachandra, whose queens built Rani ki Vav. It was sacked in 1197 and 1299, and in 1411 the capital moved to Ahmedabad.
StandingPataleshwar Cave Temple, Pune
A Shiva temple cut down into a single outcrop of basalt in the middle of Pune, with a round Nandi pavilion carved free in its courtyard. It is of the same age and school as the rock-cut work at Ellora.
StandingVaital Deula, Bhubaneswar
An 8th-century Devi temple near Bindu Sagar with a vaulted, barrel-shaped roof, the khakhara form, and three small finials along its ridge. Chamunda sits in the dark sanctum.
RuinedMasrur Rock-cut Temples
A group of fifteen Nagara temples carved, top down, out of one sandstone ridge in the Kangra hills, the only monolithic temple group of this kind in the Himalaya.
StandingKailasa Temple, Ellora (Cave 16)
A whole temple, with its shrine, Nandi mandapa, towers and elephants, carved downward out of a single basalt hill under the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I. Nothing was built; everything that is not temple was cut away.
StandingVaikuntha Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram
A Pallava stone temple whose three sanctums, one above another, hold Vishnu seated, reclining and standing, and whose cloister walls carry the story of the Pallava kings in sculpture with label inscriptions.
DestroyedOdantapuri Mahavihara
A Pala-era monastery at what is now Bihar Sharif, whose plan served as the model for Samye, the first monastery of Tibet. It is the vihara most scholars identify in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri’s account of Bakhtiyar Khalji’s sack of ‘the fort of Bihar’.
StandingThiruparankundram
The first of Murugan’s six Padai Veedu, the battle camps, on a granite hill at the edge of Madurai. Here Murugan married Devasena, daughter of Indra, after slaying Surapadman, and the sanctum is cut into the living rock.
StandingOsian Temples
A desert town on the old caravan road north of Jodhpur with some of the earliest surviving temples of western India: Harihara and Surya shrines of the Pratihara age, the Mahavira temple, and the living temple of Sachiya Mata on the hill.
StandingPo Nagar, Nha Trang
A hilltop temple of the Devi above the Cai river mouth at Nha Trang, still in worship by Cham and Vietnamese alike more than a thousand years after its first towers rose.
ExcavatedSomapura Mahavihara (Paharpur)
The largest monastery south of the Himalayas, built by the Pala king Dharmapala in Varendra, north Bengal: a square of 177 cells round a towering cross-shaped shrine. Its terracotta plaques show Krishna, Balarama and scenes of the Ramayana beside the Buddhist figures.
StandingParthasarathy Temple, Triplicane
The oldest temple of Chennai and a Divya Desam, where Krishna stands as Arjuna’s charioteer with a moustache and the scars of Bhishma’s arrows on his face. Five forms of Vishnu sung by the Alvars are worshipped in one complex.
ExcavatedVikramashila Mahavihara
The Pala kings’ own university on the Ganga at Antichak, near Bhagalpur, founded by Dharmapala. Its most famous teacher, Atisha Dipankara, carried its learning to Tibet; it was destroyed around 1203.
RuinedGedong Songo Temples
Groups of small stone Shiva temples spread along the ridges of Mount Ungaran at about 1,200 metres, among the oldest Hindu buildings in Java. Gedong Songo means nine buildings in Javanese.
StandingTeli ka Mandir, Gwalior Fort
The tallest building on Gwalior fort, a temple with a rectangular sanctum and a wagon-vault roof, unlike almost any other in north India. It is dated between the early 8th and early 9th century.
StandingAranmula Parthasarathy Temple
One of the five Kerala temples held to be founded by the Pandavas, this is Arjuna’s, on the Pamba river. Its snake-boat regatta and grand feast are among Kerala’s best-known festivals.
StandingKallazhagar Temple, Alagar Kovil
The Vishnu temple at the foot of the Alagar hills, 21 km from Madurai, whose deity rides into Madurai every Chithirai on a golden horse for his sister Meenakshi’s wedding and steps into the Vaigai before lakhs of people.
StandingKoodal Azhagar Temple, Madurai
The Divya Desam in the heart of Madurai where Periyalvar sang the first Thiruppallandu, and whose three-storeyed vimana holds Vishnu seated, standing and reclining, one above the other.
StandingUlagalantha Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram
The temple of Trivikrama in Kanchipuram, where a murti about 35 feet tall shows Vishnu with one foot raised to the heavens, the moment Bali’s gift was taken in three strides. Four Divya Desams are worshipped within its walls.
StandingOppiliappan Temple, Thirunageswaram
The Divya Desam near Kumbakonam where Vishnu married Bhumi Devi, born as the daughter of Markandeya, and accepted her saltless cooking. No salt enters the temple kitchen, and vows made to Tirupati may be fulfilled here.
StandingNava Tirupati, the nine Vishnu temples of the Thamirabarani
Nine Divya Desams along the banks of the Thamirabarani between Srivaikuntam and Alwarthirunagari, all sung by Nammalvar, and each worshipped as the seat of one of the nine grahas.
StandingAzhagiya Nambirayar Temple, Thirukurungudi
A Divya Desam at the foot of the Western Ghats, the birthplace of the Kaisika katha of the devotee Nambaduvan, which is acted out in the temple every Kaisika Ekadashi.
StandingVeeraraghava Perumal Temple, Thiruvallur
The Divya Desam of Vishnu the healer, 45 km west of Chennai, where the sick dissolve salt and pepper in the temple tank and crowds gather on every new moon.
RebuiltBateshwar Temples, Morena
Nearly 200 small sandstone temples to Shiva and Vishnu in a ravine near Padavali, which fell into heaps of rubble and were rebuilt by the ASI from 2005, nearly 80 of them stone by stone.
RuinedUnakoti
A forested hillside near Kailashahar where giant faces of Shiva and the devas are carved into the rock, the largest a Shiva head about 30 feet high.
StandingThiruvanchikulam Mahadeva Temple
The only temple in Kerala sung in the Tevaram. From here, the Periya Puranam says, Sundaramurti Nayanar rose to Kailash on a white elephant, with his friend King Cheraman Perumal riding after him.
RuinedManyakheta (Malkhed)
The capital Amoghavarsha I built for the Rashtrakutas on the Kagina river, from which they ruled the Deccan for a century and a half. The Paramaras sacked it in 972; it is now the village of Malkhed.
StandingKatarmal Sun Temple
A Surya temple of the Katyuri kings on a ridge near Almora, with some forty-four smaller shrines grouped round the main one. It is the most important Sun temple of the Himalaya and a monument protected by the ASI.
StandingBhoga Nandeeshwara Temple, Nandi
Twin Shiva temples at the foot of Nandi Hills, begun in the 9th century and added to by five dynasties, with a great stepped tank behind them. Shiva of the hilltop is Yoga Nandeeshwara; Shiva of the plain is Bhoga, the one who enjoys.
StandingMahalingeswarar Temple, Thiruvidaimarudur
Madhyarjunam, the middle of the three Arjuna-tree shrines of Shiva, where the Pandya king Varaguna was freed of the sin of killing a brahmin. Its four great streets and corridors make it one of the largest Shiva temples of the Kaveri delta.
StandingYogadhyan Badri, Pandukeshwar
The Panch Badri temple at Pandukeshwar, where King Pandu did tapas and the Pandavas were born. In winter the utsava murti of Uddhava from Badrinath is brought here and worshipped.
StandingChausath Yogini Temple, Hirapur
A roofless ring of sandstone, about 7.5 metres across, in the paddy fields 15 km from Bhubaneswar, with sixty-four Yoginis in black chlorite standing in niches round its inner wall.
StandingShankaracharya Temple, Srinagar
A stone Shiva temple on the hill that rises about 300 metres above Srinagar and the Dal lake, linked by Kashmiri tradition with Adi Shankaracharya’s stay in the valley.
RebuiltPrambanan (Shivagrha)
The largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, raised to the Trimurti in ninth-century Java. Its central Shiva tower stands 47 metres high.
StandingKoodalmanikyam Temple, Irinjalakuda
The only ancient temple in India dedicated to Bharata, Shri Rama’s brother. Its Koodiyattam theatre and its long Medam festival with seventeen elephants are famous, and its rituals follow rules found nowhere else.
RuinedAvantiswami Temple
The Vishnu temple built by Avantivarman, founder of the Utpala dynasty, at his new town of Avantipura on the Jhelum. Its plinth, colonnade and carved gateway survive.
StandingKodungallur (Mahodayapuram)
Mahodayapuram, the royal city of the Chera Perumals at the mouth of the Periyar, close to old Muziris. Its Bhagavathy temple, with the fierce Bharani festival in the month of Meenam, is one of the great Devi shrines of Kerala.
StandingThanumalayan Temple, Suchindram
A temple where the Trimurti are worshipped together in one linga, and where, the sthala purana says, Indra was cleansed of Gautama’s curse. Indra is held to come every night for the last puja.
StandingKabul
The city on the river the Rigveda calls the Kubha, for centuries a seat of kings of the Indic world: the Turk Shahis and then the Hindu Shahis, until the Saffarids took it around 870. Hindus and Sikhs lived here until the last decades, worshipping at the Asamai temple.
RuinedWaihind (Udabhandapura, Hund)
Udabhandapura, the Waihind of the Arab writers, on the right bank of the Indus above Attock, was the capital of the Hindu Shahi kings Jayapala and Anandapala. Near it in 1008–09 Anandapala’s allied army fought Mahmud of Ghazni and lost.
StandingGwalior Fort
A sandstone ridge 3 km long above Gwalior city, held in turn by the Pratiharas, Kachchhapaghatas, Delhi sultans, Tomars, Mughals, Marathas and British. On its path stands the Chaturbhuj temple, whose inscription of 876 CE has the oldest dated zero in India written as a circle.
StandingBakong, Roluos (Hariharalaya)
The first great sandstone temple mountain of the Khmer, raised by Indravarman I at his capital Hariharalaya and consecrated in 881. Every later temple mountain of Angkor, up to Angkor Wat itself, grows from this five-tiered pyramid.
StandingPandrethan Shiva Temple, Srinagar
A small, nearly complete Kashmiri stone temple standing in a spring-fed tank at Pandrethan, the site of Puranadhishthana, the old capital of Kashmir. It is one of the best-preserved temples of the valley.
RuinedPhnom Bakheng (Yashodharagiri)
The state temple of Yashovarman I on the one natural hill of the Angkor plain, the centre of his new capital Yashodharapura and more than two centuries older than Angkor Wat. A stepped Meru of five terraces carried 108 small towers around a central shrine of Shiva.
StandingSarangapani Temple, Kumbakonam
The great Vishnu temple of Kumbakonam and one of the foremost Divya Desams, whose sanctum is built as a chariot drawn by horses and elephants. A single decad of Nammalvar heard here led Nathamuni to recover the four thousand hymns of the Alvars.
StandingPadmavathi Ammavari Temple, Tiruchanur
The temple of Padmavathi, Venkateswara’s consort, at the foot of the Tirumala hills. Tradition says a pilgrimage to Tirumala is complete only after her darshan.
StandingRaja Rajeshwara Temple, Vemulawada
Dakshina Kashi of Telangana, the old capital of the Vemulawada Chalukyas, where devotees offer a bull calf to Rajanna in the custom of kode mokku.
StandingVarahi Deula, Chaurasi
A small khakhara temple in the Prachi valley that holds one of the finest images of Varahi in India: the boar-faced Mother, seated at ease, holding a fish and a skull-cup.
RuinedRanipur-Jharial Temples and Chausath Yogini
A rock plateau in western Odisha scattered with some fifty old temples, among them a circular, roofless Yogini temple where every Yogini is shown dancing, and the Indralath, a tall brick temple.
StandingKumararama, Bhimeswara Temple, Samalkot
The Pancharama installed by Kumara himself, at Samalkot near Kakinada. Built under the Eastern Chalukyas as a twin of Draksharama, it is protected by the ASI.
RuinedAmb Temples, Salt Range
Brick and stone temples on a hill in the Sakesar valley of the Salt Range, among the finest left from the Hindu Shahi age. The main shrine still rises three storeys, though no worship has been offered there for centuries.
StandingMahoba (Mahotsavanagara)
The Chandela city of the great tanks, home of the heroes Alha and Udal, which Prithviraj Chauhan sacked in 1182. The Alha songs of its wars are still sung across the Hindi country in the rains.
StandingJageshwar Temples
More than a hundred stone temples of Shiva crowded in a deodar valley in Kumaon. Some Kumaoni traditions count Jageshwar as the Nageshwar Jyotirlinga of Darukavana.
StandingArunachaleswara Temple, Tiruvannamalai
The fire sthala of the Pancha Bhuta lingas, at the foot of Arunachala, the hill that is itself worshipped as Shiva. On Karthigai Deepam a great flame is lit on its summit.
StandingAndal Temple, Srivilliputhur
The birthplace of Andal, the only woman among the twelve Alvars, who wore the garland meant for the Bhagwan and married Ranganatha. Its tall gopuram appears on the emblem of Tamil Nadu.
StandingMukhalingam Temples (Kalinganagara)
The old Eastern Ganga capital Kalinganagara on the Vamsadhara, where three Shiva temples show the Kalinga style in its youth, before Bhubaneswar and Puri.
StandingBhimeswara Temple, Draksharamam
Daksha’s aramam, where Daksha Prajapati held the yajna that Sati entered: one of the five Pancharama shrines and a Shakti Peetha of Manikyamba, in the Godavari delta.
StandingUttaramerur
A village of Vedic scholars where inscriptions of the Chola king Parantaka I, cut in 919 and 921 CE, set out in detail how the village assembly was to be chosen by lot from qualified candidates. They are among the oldest written rules for local self-government anywhere.
StandingLakshmi Narayan Temples, Chamba
A row of six stone shikhara temples beside the palace of Chamba, the royal temples of a kingdom that kept its line unbroken for over a thousand years. Their tall curved towers wear wooden umbrella-roofs against the mountain snow.
RuinedBaroli Temples
A walled group of eight 10th-century temples by the Chambal, with a ninth outside, around a stepped kund. The Ghateshwara Mahadev temple is one of the finest of the Pratihara age.
RuinedKoh Ker (Lingapura) and Prasat Thom
For sixteen years the capital of the Khmer empire, a city of lingas the inscriptions call Lingapura, with a seven-tiered pyramid 36 metres high at its heart. Its sculptures were looted for decades; some have come home, and the site became a World Heritage Site in 2023.
StandingThillai Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram
Where Shiva danced the Ananda Tandava in the Thillai forest, and the Akasha (space) sthala of the Pancha Bhuta lingas. The sanctum’s ‘Chidambara Rahasyam’ is an empty space hung with a golden garland.
RebuiltNallur Kandaswamy Temple
The great Murugan temple of Jaffna, burnt by the Portuguese in 1620 and rebuilt in 1734. Its 25-day festival is the largest Hindu gathering in Sri Lanka.
StandingPayar Shiva Temple, Pulwama
A small complete Shiva temple of the old Kashmiri style in Payar village, built of a few huge blocks of stone, with a linga still in its sanctum. The Muslim families of the village have looked after it for generations.
StandingKhajuraho
The temple city of the Chandelas, where about 25 of perhaps 85 temples survive. The Lakshmana, Vishvanatha and Kandariya Mahadeva temples are the high point of the Nagara style, and the Matangeshvara is still in worship.
RuinedHarshnath Temple
A Shiva temple on the summit of Harsha hill near Sikar, the family shrine of the Chahamanas of Shakambhari. Its inscription of 973 calls the mountain Shiva’s second Kailasa; the temple now stands in ruins beside a newer shrine of 1718.
StandingMukteshwar Temple, Bhubaneswar
A small sandstone temple, barely 10 metres high, that marks the turn from the early to the mature Kalinga style. Its arched torana is found nowhere else in Odisha.
RuinedPre Rup, Angkor
The state temple of Rajendravarman II, who brought the Khmer court back to Angkor from Koh Ker. A pyramid of brick and laterite that glows red at sunrise, it was dedicated to Shiva in 961 or 962.
StandingAmbika Mata Temple, Jagat
A small, densely carved Devi temple in a fold of the hills south-east of Udaipur, with an inscription of 961 CE. People call it the Khajuraho of Mewar.
StandingPura Tirta Empul, Tampaksiring
The temple of the holy spring at Tampaksiring, founded in 962, where Balinese Hindus stand under a row of stone spouts for melukat, the bath of purification. The spring is the source of the Pakerisan river.
StandingSri Venkateswara Temple, Tirumala
The hill shrine of Venkateswara on the seventh of the Seshachalam hills, where Bhagwan stands in this Kali Yuga to grant refuge. More pilgrims climb to it than to almost any shrine on earth.
StandingBanteay Srei
A small Shiva temple of pink sandstone, carved so finely that it is called the jewel of Khmer art. It was built not by a king but by a royal guru.
StandingMangaluru (Mangalore)
The Tulu port named after its goddess Mangaladevi, seat of the Alupa kings, and the coast on which Rani Abbakka of Ullal fought the Portuguese for decades in the 16th century.
StandingShravanabelagola
The great Jain tirtha between two hills, where a single granite figure of Bahubali about 17 m high has stood since the 980s. Jain tradition holds that Chandragupta Maurya ended his life here as a monk with his guru Bhadrabahu.
RuinedPolonnaruwa (Jananathamangalam)
When Rajaraja Chola’s army took Anuradhapura in 993, the Cholas made Polonnaruwa their seat in Lanka and named it Jananathamangalam. Their granite Shiva temple, Shiva Devale No. 2, is the oldest standing building in the city.
StandingThirunelli Maha Vishnu Temple
A Vishnu temple in the forest of the Brahmagiri hills, called the Kashi of the south, where pilgrims perform the last rites and shraddha for their ancestors in the Papanasini stream.
StandingRajarani Temple, Bhubaneswar
A Kalinga rekha temple of reddish-gold sandstone that the people of Bhubaneswar named after the stone itself, rajarania. Its tower is ringed with miniature spires, and its walls carry the finest dikpalas and nayikas in Odisha.
RebuiltKichakeswari Temple, Khiching
The guardian Devi of the Bhanja kings at Khiching, their old capital in the forests of Mayurbhanj. Her temple of dark chlorite fell and was raised again, stone by stone, in the 20th century.
StandingThyagaraja Temple, Tiruvarur
One of the greatest Shiva temples of the Kaveri delta, with the vast Kamalalayam tank and the largest temple chariot of Tamil Nadu. The town is the birthplace of all three of the Carnatic Trinity.
RuinedMadan Kamdev
A hillside of fallen temples at Baihata Chariali near Guwahati, littered with carved stone from the last centuries of the Kamarupa kingdom.
StandingSri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam
The first of the 108 Divya Desams, on an island between the Kaveri and Kollidam, with seven concentric walls and 21 gopurams. Ramanujacharya lived and taught here.
RuinedChausath Yogini Temple, Bhedaghat
A circular, roofless yogini temple on a hilltop over the Narmada’s marble gorge, with more than eighty stone goddesses in its cloister. Most of them stand today with broken faces and arms.
StandingSomarama, Someswara Temple, Bhimavaram
The Pancharama of Chandra, at Gunupudi on the edge of Bhimavaram. Its linga is known for changing colour with the moon.
RuinedTalakad
The old Ganga capital on a bend of the Kaveri, fought over by Cholas and Hoysalas, now half swallowed by sand. Its five Shiva temples are dug out for the Panchalinga Darshana held at long intervals.
StandingNagapattinam
The Chola sea-gate to Southeast Asia, where a king of Srivijaya built a Buddhist vihara and Rajaraja Chola gave a village for its upkeep. The Shaiva saints sang its Kayarohana temple, and the Dutch later made it their headquarters on the coast.
RuinedPreah Vihear (Shikhareshvara)
A Shiva temple strung along a cliff of the Dangrek mountains, ending at a drop of more than 500 metres over the Cambodian plain. Cambodia and Thailand have argued over it for a century.
StandingLakkundi
A village of temples and stepwells near Gadag, once a mint town of the Kalyani Chalukyas. Its Kashivishveshvara temple has some of the most intricate doorways in the Deccan.
RuinedNagarkot: Kangra Fort and Vajreshwari Devi
The fort of the Katoch kings above the Banganga, and the Shakti Peetha of Vajreshwari Devi in the town below. Mahmud of Ghazni carried off its treasure in 1009; Jahangir took the fort in 1620, and the 1905 earthquake threw down both fort and temple.
RebuiltBajreshwari (Vajreshwari) Devi Temple, Kangra
Kangra Devi, the Shakti Peetha of old Nagarkot, where devotees hold that the left breast of Mata Sati fell. Its treasure drew Mahmud of Ghazni in 1009; the earthquake of 1905 flattened it, and the temple seen today was raised again after it.
StandingBhopal (Bhojpal)
The city of lakes, which takes its name, by tradition, from Raja Bhoja’s dam. Here in the winter of 1737–38 Bajirao I surrounded the Nizam and forced the convention that gave Malwa to the Marathas.
StandingBrihadeeswara Temple, Thanjavur
Rajaraja Chola’s Rajarajeshvaram, finished in the 25th year of his reign, with a granite vimana about 66 m high. A thousand years on, its walls still carry the king’s own record of every gift and every servant of the temple.
RuinedNandana Fort
A fort on a spur of the Salt Range guarding the pass to the Jhelum plain, the last strong place of the Hindu Shahis. Mahmud of Ghazni took it in 1014, and a few years later al-Biruni used its hill to measure the size of the earth.
StandingKurukshetra and Jyotisar
The Dharmakshetra where the Mahabharata war was fought and Shri Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna at Jyotisar. Harsha’s capital Thanesar stood here.
StandingSriperumbudur
The birthplace of Shri Ramanujacharya, born here in 1017 by the Sri Vaishnava reckoning. His shrine stands inside the Adikesava Perumal temple, and the town is one of the holiest places of the sampradaya.
StandingVadaranyeswarar Temple, Tiruvalangadu (Ratna Sabha)
The Ratna Sabha, hall of gems, among the five sabhas of Nataraja: here Shiva danced against Kali and won with the Urdhva Tandava, and here Karaikkal Ammaiyar sang at his feet to the end of her life.
RebuiltShri Krishna Janmabhoomi, Mathura
The prison-cell of Kamsa where Shri Krishna was born at midnight. The Katra Keshavdev mound carried great temples that were destroyed in 1018 and 1670; the Shahi Idgah stands on part of it, and a new temple complex stands beside.
StandingSankaranarayanar Temple, Sankarankovil
The temple where Devi Gomathi did tapas to see Shiva and Vishnu as one, and was shown Sankaranarayana, half Shiva and half Vishnu. Its Aadi Thabasu festival recalls that darshan every July–August.
RuinedKalinjar Fort
A flat-topped Vindhya hill in Bundelkhand, sacred to Shiva as Neelkanth, the one who held the poison. As the great fortress of the Chandelas it was besieged by Mahmud of Ghazni, taken by Qutbuddin Aibak, and it killed Sher Shah.
RuinedKakanmath Temple, Sihoniya
A ruined Shiva temple standing alone in the fields of Sihoniya, its stripped spire still about 30 metres high, held up by nothing but the weight of dry stone. The Kachchhapaghata king Kirttiraja built it.
ExcavatedKedah (Kadaram) and the Bujang Valley
The Malay port the Tamils called Kadaram and Sanskrit texts Kataha, at the foot of Gunung Jerai, where dozens of brick and laterite shrines have been dug out of the Bujang Valley. Rajendra Chola’s fleet took it in 1025.
RebuiltSomnath Jyotirlinga
The first Jyotirlinga, on the shore at Prabhas where the Sarasvati meets the sea. Raided, razed and rebuilt again and again for nine hundred years, it was raised once more by free India in 1951.
RuinedSun Temple, Modhera
A Surya temple of the Chaulukya kings, raised on the Pushpavati river the year after Mahmud of Ghazni’s army passed through Gujarat. Worship ended long ago, but the stepped Surya Kund and the carved halls still stand.
RebuiltKhatu Shyam Ji Temple, Khatu
The shrine of Barbarika, grandson of Bhima, whose head Shri Krishna asked for before the Mahabharata war and blessed to be worshipped in Kali Yuga by Krishna’s own name, Shyam. Lakhs walk here for the Phalgun mela.
RebuiltDilwara Temples, Mount Abu
Five Jain temples on Mount Abu, plain outside and carved in white marble within so finely that the stone looks translucent. Damaged in the early 14th century, they were restored from 1321 by Jain families of Mandor.
StandingBahraich
The town in northern Awadh where, by the regional tradition and the Persian Mirat-i-Masudi, Raja Suheldev and the allied rajas destroyed the army of Salar Masud in 1033. A memorial to Suheldev now stands at Chittaura lake, the remembered battlefield.
DestroyedBhojshala, Dhar
The hall of learning in Raja Bhoja’s capital at Dhar, held by Hindus to be his Sarasvati Sadan, which was turned into a mosque, known as the Kamal Maula mosque, in the Sultanate period. Sanskrit grammar tables, poems and a play are still cut on its walls; in May 2026 the Madhya Pradesh High Court held it to be a temple of Vagdevi, and appeals are before the Supreme Court.
StandingBhojeshwar Temple, Bhojpur
An unfinished Shiva temple of Raja Bhoja on a ridge above the Betwa, holding one of the largest lingas in India. The builders’ plans, scratched on the surrounding rocks, survive with it.
StandingGangaikonda Cholapuram
The capital and temple Rajendra I built after his army reached the Ganga, the seat of the Chola empire for some 250 years. Only the temple survives of the city.
StandingNathlaung Kyaung, Bagan
The only Hindu temple left standing among the thousands of Buddhist monuments of Bagan, a brick shrine of Vishnu inside the old city walls. It served the Brahmins and Indian merchants who lived at the Burmese court.
RebuiltBaphuon, Angkor Thom
A three-tiered temple mountain of Shiva, the ‘mountain of gold’ of the Khmer inscriptions, beside the royal palace of Angkor. Taken apart stone by stone by French archaeologists in the 1960s, it was left as 300,000 unnumbered blocks by the war and put back together only in 2011.
StandingGoa Gajah (Elephant Cave), Bedulu
A meditation cave cut into a riverside cliff near Ubud, entered through a gaping carved mouth, with an image of Ganesh and a triple linga inside. It is named as Lwa Gajah in the Majapahit court poem of 1365.
StandingMahamaya Temple, Ratanpur
The temple of Mahamaya at Ratanpur, old Ratnapura, capital of the Kalachuri kings of Chhattisgarh for some seven centuries. She is the kuldevi of the region, and at Navratri thousands of oil lamps burn in her halls.
StandingBasavakalyan (Kalyani)
Kalyana, capital of the later Chalukyas under Someshvara I and Vikramaditya VI, and the city where Basava, minister of the Kalachuri Bijjala, gathered the sharanas in the Anubhava Mantapa. It was renamed Basavakalyan in 1956.
StandingLingaraja Temple, Bhubaneswar
The great temple of Ekamra Kshetra, from whose name Tribhuvaneshvara the city of Bhubaneswar takes its own. The swayambhu linga is worshipped as Harihara, Shiva and Vishnu together, with bilva and tulsi both offered.
StandingAmarkantak, Source of the Narmada
The plateau in the Maikal hills where the Narmada and the Son rise. Every Narmada parikrama, the walk of some 2,600 km along both banks, begins and ends here.
StandingDelhi (Indraprastha)
The Pandavas’ Indraprastha stood on the Yamuna where the Purana Qila now stands, and the Tomaras and Chauhans built the first walled Delhi at Mehrauli. Seven or more cities have risen on the same ground since.
StandingVaradharaja Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram
The Divya Desam on Hastigiri where Brahma’s yajna brought Vishnu forth as Varada. Its old wooden image, Athi Varadar, lies under the temple tank and rises for darshan once in forty years.
StandingBrahmeswara Temple, Bhubaneswar
A panchayatana Shiva temple of Bhubaneswar whose date is known from its foundation inscription: the eighteenth regnal year of Udyotakesari, about 1058 CE. Four smaller shrines stand at the corners of its courtyard.
StandingChausath Yogini Temple, Mitaoli
A circular temple on a hilltop near Gwalior, with 64 cells round an open courtyard and a round shrine to Shiva at the centre. Locals call it Ekattarso Mahadeva.
RuinedLal Kot and Qila Rai Pithora, Delhi
The first walled city of Delhi, built by the Tomaras and enlarged by Prithviraj Chauhan, which fell in 1192. Its temples were pulled down for the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, whose own inscription says it was built from 27 temples.
StandingAmbreshwar Shiva Temple, Ambernath
A dated Shilahara temple of 1060 on the edge of Mumbai, its walls crowded with carving and its sanctum sunk below ground level. Its own inscription names the king and the year.
StandingOmkareshwar
A Jyotirlinga on Mandhata, an island in the Narmada whose shape, seen from above, is said to trace the syllable Om. Adi Shankaracharya found his guru here.
ExcavatedRani ki Vav, Patan
A seven-storeyed stepwell at the old Chaulukya capital Anahilapataka, built as an inverted temple to water. Flooded and filled with silt by the Sarasvati, it lay buried for centuries until the ASI dug it out; UNESCO listed it in 2014.
StandingRajagopalaswamy Temple, Mannargudi
Dakshina Dwaraka, the Dwaraka of the south: a vast Krishna temple of some 23 acres with sixteen gopurams, a towering monolithic pillar and the Haridra Nadhi, one of the largest temple tanks in India.
StandingVarasiddhi Vinayaka Temple, Kanipakam
A self-manifest Ganesh who rose from a well in a field on the Bahuda river, and before whom disputes are still settled by oath. The murti, devotees say, keeps growing.
StandingBhoramdeo Temple
An 11th-century Shiva temple at the foot of the Maikal hills, its walls crowded with carving in the manner of Khajuraho. It was built under the Phani-Nagavanshi kings of Kawardha.
StandingPrasat Phanom Rung
A Khmer temple of Shiva on the rim of an extinct volcano in north-east Thailand, built as Kailasa on earth, with a processional way of naga bridges climbing to it. Its famous lintel of Vishnu asleep on Ananta was stolen in the 1960s and came home from Chicago in 1988.
RuinedKiradu Temples
The ruins of at least five temples in the Thar near Barmer, the Someshvara Shiva temple the best preserved. Their inscriptions record a Turushka attack and the restoration that followed.
StandingSrikurmanatha Temple, Srikurmam
The only major temple in India where Vishnu is worshipped as Kurma, the tortoise who bore Mount Mandara at the churning of the ocean. Its walls carry Eastern Ganga inscriptions and old painted murals.
StandingSuryanar Kovil
The one temple of the Kaveri Navagraha circuit where the graha himself is the presiding deity: Surya stands in the sanctum and the other eight grahas face him from their own shrines.
StandingBhuvaraha Swamy Temple, Srimushnam
One of the eight Swayam Vyakta kshetras of Vishnu, where Bhagwan as the Varaha who lifted the Earth from the ocean is held to have appeared of himself.
StandingRamanathaswamy Temple, Rameswaram
The southern Jyotirlinga, installed by Shri Rama on the island at the head of the setu before the war in Lanka. It is also the southern dham of the Char Dham.
StandingMelukote (Tirunarayanapura)
The hill town where Ramanujacharya lived for about twelve years in the Hoysala country. Its festival murti, the tradition says, he brought back from Delhi himself.
StandingMahalakshmi (Ambabai) Temple, Kolhapur
The Shakti Peetha of Karavira, where Mahalakshmi is worshipped as Ambabai. Twice a year the setting sun walks into the sanctum and lights her face.
StandingMahadeva Temple, Itagi
The temple its own inscription calls Devalaya Chakravarti, emperor among temples. A general of the Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI built it in 1112.
StandingAjmer (Ajayameru)
The Chauhan capital founded by Ajayaraja II, where Vigraharaja IV built a Sanskrit college and had plays carved in stone. After 1192 the college was turned into the mosque called Adhai Din ka Jhonpra.
StandingLakshmi Devi Temple, Doddagaddavalli
The earliest dated Hoysala temple, built in 1113 by a merchant and his wife, a rare four-shrined plan round one hall. Its fierce Kali shrine is guarded by two skeletal vetalas.
StandingAngkor Wat
The largest Hindu temple ever raised, built by the Khmer king Suryavarman II for Bhagwan Vishnu. Its five towers stand for Meru, and they are on the flag of Cambodia.
StandingChennakeshava Temple, Belur
Vishnuvardhana’s temple on the Yagachi, consecrated in 1117 after his victory over the Cholas at Talakad. It has been in worship for nine hundred years and its soapstone carving set the Hoysala standard.
RuinedHoysaleswara Temple, Halebidu
The twin Shiva temple of Dorasamudra, the Hoysala capital, covered from plinth to eaves in carving. The city was sacked by Malik Kafur in 1311 and again by Muhammad bin Tughluq’s army in 1326–27; its name became Halebidu, ‘the old ruined town’.
StandingAmararama, Amareswara Temple, Amaravati
The first of the five Pancharamas, on the south bank of the Krishna at Amaravati. The linga here is held to have been installed by Indra, which gives the place its name, the arama of the Amaras.
StandingGovindaraja Swamy Temple, Tirupati
The great temple in the heart of Tirupati town, round which the town itself was laid out. Sri Vaishnava tradition holds that Ramanujacharya consecrated it in 1130 CE.
StandingShri Jagannath Temple, Puri
Purushottama Kshetra, the eastern dham of the Char Dham, where Bhagwan Jagannath, his elder brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra sit in wooden forms renewed in the Navakalevara rite. The present temple rose under the Eastern Gangas and survived repeated raids because the priests carried the deities away and brought them back.
StandingKopeshwar Temple, Khidrapur
A Shiva temple on the Krishna whose open-roofed Swarga Mandapa looks straight up at the sky. It is one of the rare shrines where Shiva and Vishnu share one sanctum, and where there is no Nandi before the door.
DestroyedRudra Mahalaya, Siddhpur
The greatest Shiva temple of the Chaulukyas, on the Sarasvati at Siddhpur. Broken in Alauddin Khalji’s invasion of 1299 and partly turned into a mosque by Ahmad Shah I in 1414–15, it survives as a few towering pillars and a torana.
StandingRukmini Devi Temple, Dwarka
The temple of Rukmini, standing alone two kilometres outside Dwarka because of the rishi Durvasa’s curse. The Dwarka yatra is held incomplete without her darshan.
StandingShivrinarayan (Sheorinarayan) Temple
A Vishnu temple at the meeting of the Mahanadi, Shivnath and Jonk, named for Shabari, whose berries Shri Rama ate. Chhattisgarh calls it the Jagannath of the region and holds a great fair here at Magh Purnima.
StandingGondeshwar Temple, Sinnar
The finest complete panchayatana temple of the Deccan: a Shiva shrine at the centre of a walled court, with four smaller shrines at the corners and a Nandi pavilion in front. Sinnar was an early seat of the Seuna (Yadava) kings before they moved to Devagiri.
DestroyedAdhai Din ka Jhonpra, Ajmer
A mosque at Ajmer built after the fall of Prithviraj Chauhan from the pillars and stones of the Chahamana city, on the site where Vigraharaja IV had kept a Sanskrit college. Slabs carved with his own play, the Harakeli Nataka, were dug out of it in the 19th century.
StandingKsheerarama, Ksheera Ramalingeswara Temple, Palakollu
The Pancharama of Vishnu, in the delta town of Palakollu, where the sthala purana says milk sprang from the earth at Shiva’s trident. Its gopuram is one of the tallest in Andhra.
StandingAiravatesvara Temple, Darasuram
A smaller, jewel-like Chola temple near Kumbakonam, where Indra’s white elephant Airavata worshipped Shiva. Its front hall is carved as a chariot drawn by horses.
RebuiltDhakeshwari National Temple
The Devi temple that the city of Dhaka is often said to be named after, and the National Temple of Bangladesh. Its original murti was taken to Kolkata after Partition.
StandingThousand Pillar Temple, Hanamkonda
Rudradeva’s triple shrine of 1163 at the old Kakatiya seat of Hanamkonda, built the year the dynasty declared its independence. Its pillared hall is famous for the number of its columns.
StandingKudalasangama
The confluence where Basavanna studied as a young man and where, at the end of his life, he merged with the Lord he addressed in every vachana as Kudalasangamadeva.
StandingMount Abu (Arbuda)
Arbuda, the lone high massif of the southern Aravallis, where tradition places Vasishtha’s ashram and the fire-pit from which the Paramaras traced their birth. At its foot the army of Gujarat broke Muhammad of Ghor at Kasahrada in 1178.
StandingPanhala Fort
The great Shilahara fort above Kolhapur, where Siddi Jauhar trapped Shivaji in 1660, and from which he slipped out on a rainy night while Baji Prabhu held the pass behind him.
RuinedDevagiri (Daulatabad) Fort
The capital of the Yadavas of Devagiri, a conical hill scarped smooth all round so that no one could climb it. Its fall to Alauddin Khalji’s armies between 1296 and 1318 opened the Deccan to the Delhi Sultanate.
StandingBayon, Angkor Thom
The state temple at the centre of Angkor Thom, built by Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist shrine. It is in a Hindu history because the Khmer world around it was Hindu, and because a later king turned it back to Shiva and Vishnu.
StandingQutb Complex, Mehrauli
Inside Lal Kot, the citadel of the Tomaras and Chauhans, Qutbuddin Aibak raised Delhi’s first mosque from the pillars of the temples he pulled down, and began the Qutb Minar beside it. The Gupta iron pillar stands in the courtyard.
RuinedWarangal Fort (Orugallu)
The Kakatiya capital Orugallu, ringed by three walls, which held out against Delhi in 1303 and 1310 and fell in 1323. Its four carved stone gateways stand among the ruins of a great Shiva temple.
RuinedCandi Penataran (Palah), Blitar
The largest Hindu temple complex of East Java, on the slopes of the Kelud volcano, worshipped from 1197 to the end of Majapahit. Hayam Wuruk, the greatest Majapahit king, came here often, and the main terraces carry the Ramayana and the Krishnayana in relief.
StandingMahadev Temple, Tambdi Surla
A small basalt Shiva temple of the Kadamba age, deep in the forest at the foot of the Sahyadris, the only one of its period in Goa to survive the Sultanate and Portuguese demolitions.
StandingVitthal–Rukmini Temple, Pandharpur
The home of Vithoba on the banks of the Chandrabhaga, goal of the Warkari wari on Ashadhi Ekadashi. For eight hundred years Maharashtra’s saints have walked here singing.
StandingBelagavi (Belgaum) Fort
The old Ratta fort at the heart of Belagavi, the district town near which Kittur Chennamma was born and against which her kingdom stood. The British took it after a siege in 1818, and in 1924 Gandhiji presided here over the only Congress session he ever chaired.
StandingBaijnath Temple, Kangra
A Nagara stone temple of Shiva Vaidyanath, the Lord of physicians, built in 1204 by two merchant brothers, as its own inscriptions record.
StandingRamappa Temple (Rudreshwara), Palampet
A Kakatiya Shiva temple of 1213 that carries the name of its sculptor, Ramappa, rather than its king. A World Heritage Site since 2021.
StandingCuttack and Barabati Fort
For about seven hundred years the capital of Odisha, under the Ganga and Gajapati kings, the Afghans, Mughals, Marathas and British, until the seat moved to Bhubaneswar in 1948. Its fort, Barabati, is now a mound and a gateway, and its Bali Jatra still remembers the ships that sailed to the islands.
RebuiltMahakaleshwar, Ujjain
The Jyotirlinga of Avantika, one of the seven moksha-giving cities, where Shiva is worshipped as Mahakal, Lord of Time and Death. The only Jyotirlinga facing south, and the only one bathed in ash at the dawn aarti.
StandingVanamamalai Perumal Temple, Nanguneri (Totadri)
A Swayam Vyakta kshetra and Divya Desam sung by Nammalvar, where the Lord is bathed in oil every day and the oil is kept in a well and given out as medicine; seat of the Vanamamalai Mutt.
StandingMotupalli
The Kakatiya port on the Andhra coast where Ganapatideva set up a pillar in 1244–45 promising foreign merchants fair duties and safety for wrecked cargo. Marco Polo landed here and wrote of the wise widowed queen who ruled the land: Rudrama Devi.
StandingKapilash Temple (Chandrasekhar), Dhenkanal
Odisha calls Kapilash the Kailash of Odisha. On top of a forested hill above Dhenkanal, Shiva is worshipped as Chandrasekhar in a temple that an inscription dates to 1246, in the reign of the king who built Konark.
RuinedKonark Sun Temple
Surya’s chariot in stone, with twenty-four carved wheels and seven horses, raised by Narasimhadeva I around 1250 at Konark, the Arka Kshetra. The great tower has fallen; the jagamohana still stands, filled with sand since 1903 to keep it standing.
StandingMaa Biraja Temple, Jajpur
Biraja Kshetra on the Vaitarani, one of the Shakti Peethas, where the Devi stands as a two-armed Mahishamardini. Jajpur is also Nabhi Gaya, where pinda is offered for the ancestors as at Gaya.
StandingCharaideo and the Ahom Moidams
The hills where Sukaphaa set up the first Ahom capital around 1253, and where for six hundred years the Ahom kings and queens were laid in moidams, vaulted chambers under great earthen mounds. The moidams became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024.
StandingKeshava Temple, Somanathapura
A complete late Hoysala temple of three star-shaped shrines, built by a general in 1268 in the village he founded. Its sculptors signed their work.
StandingVaraha Lakshmi Narasimha Temple, Simhachalam
The hill of the lion above Visakhapatnam, where Bhagwan is worshipped as Varaha and Narasimha in one form, hidden under sandal paste all year but one day.
StandingAnanta Vasudeva Temple, Bhubaneswar
The great Vaishnava temple of Shaiva Bhubaneswar, on the bank of Bindu Sagar, where Krishna, Balarama and Subhadra stand in full stone form. Its kitchen cooks a mahaprasad for thousands each day, as Puri does.
StandingSri Krishna Matha, Udupi
The Krishna that Madhvacharya installed, worshipped by the eight Udupi mathas in turn. Devotees see him through a window of nine holes, and he faces west, towards the window of the poet-saint Kanakadasa.
StandingNevasa
A town on the Pravara where, in 1290, the young Sant Jnaneshwar gave the Jnaneshwari, his Marathi commentary on the Gita. The stone pillar he leaned against is still worshipped, and the river bank below has yielded tools of the old stone age.
RuinedRaichur Fort
The Kakatiya fort that guarded the Raichur doab, the rich land between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra over which Vijayanagara and the Bahmani sultans fought for two hundred years. Krishnadevaraya took it in 1520.
StandingAlandi, Sant Jnaneshwar’s Samadhi
The town on the Indrayani where Sant Jnaneshwar entered sanjivan samadhi in 1296, at the age of twenty-one. Every Ashadh the Warkari palkhi to Pandharpur sets out from here.
StandingTrinetra Ganesh Temple, Ranthambore Fort
A Ganesh temple high inside Ranthambore fort, where Ganesh has a third eye and sits with Riddhi, Siddhi and his sons Shubh and Labh. Letters and wedding cards from all over India are posted to him here.
RuinedMalinithan, Likabali
A hilltop temple site above the Brahmaputra plain at Likabali, where the local tradition says Parvati welcomed Shri Krishna and Rukmini with garlands as they fled from Bhishmaka’s kingdom. Excavation uncovered a stone plinth and fine sculptures.
RuinedRanthambore Fort
The hill-fort in the forest where Hammiradeva Chauhan refused to hand over Alauddin Khalji’s rebels and held out for a year before falling in 1301. Its Trinetra Ganesh temple draws more pilgrims today than the tigers below draw tourists.
RuinedMandu (Mandavgad)
A plateau of the Vindhyas ringed by 37 km of wall, the Mandapadurga of the Paramaras, taken by Alauddin’s army in 1305 and made the capital of the Malwa Sultans, with the palaces of Baz Bahadur and Rani Roopmati at its edge.
RuinedKondavidu Fort
The hill capital of the Reddi kings, who rose after the fall of Warangal and kept coastal Andhra Hindu for a century. Krishnadevaraya took it from the Gajapatis in 1515.
StandingAnegondi (Kishkindha)
The old fort town across the Tungabhadra from Hampi, honoured as Kishkindha of the Ramayana, where Harihara and Bukka began before they founded Vijayanagara on the south bank in 1336. The descendants of the Vijayanagara royal house still live here.
RuinedHampi (Vijayanagara)
Vijayanagara, the City of Victory, capital of the empire that held the south for over two centuries. After the defeat at Talikota in January 1565 it was plundered for months and never lived again.
StandingSringeri Sharada Peetham
The Dakshinamnaya, the southern of the four mathas of Adi Shankaracharya, on the Tunga, with Sureshvaracharya as its first head. Its acharya Vidyaranya stood behind the founding of Vijayanagara.
StandingKochi (Cochin)
The harbour that the great flood of 1341 cut open as it silted up Muziris, and the seat of the rajas of Cochin. Portuguese, Dutch and British each held its fort in turn while the rajas kept their palace and their gods.
RebuiltAshapura Mata Temple, Mata no Madh
The temple of Ashapura Mata, kuldevi of the Jadeja rulers of Kutch and the patron Devi of the whole region. Twice shaken down by earthquakes, it has twice been put back.
StandingGhuman
A village in Gurdaspur district where, the Punjab tradition holds, the Varkari saint Namdev of Pandharpur lived his last twenty years. The shrine of Baba Namdev here is kept by Sikh sevadars, for some sixty of his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib.
StandingTaragarh Fort, Bundi
The star fort of the Hada Chauhans on the ridge above Bundi, raised in 1354. Below it the palace of the Bundi rajas spills down the hill, its walls painted with the Bundi school of murals.
RuinedGolconda Fort
A Kakatiya hill fort handed to the Bahmanis in 1364, the Qutb Shahi capital for two centuries, and taken by Aurangzeb in 1687 after an eight-month siege. The Mahakali shrine on its summit opens the Bonalu festival every year.
RuinedMandore (Mandavyapura)
The old capital of Marwar, eight kilometres north of Jodhpur, held first by a Pratihara line and then by the Rathores until Rao Jodha moved to the new fort in 1459. Its gardens hold the cenotaphs of the Rathore kings.
RebuiltJagannath Temple, Mahesh (Serampore)
The Jagannath temple on the Hooghly at Mahesh, whose Rath Yatra has been held, by the temple’s reckoning, since 1396, the oldest in Bengal and second only to Puri in age. Shri Chaitanya called the place Nava Nilachal, the new Puri.
StandingAhobilam (Nava Narasimha Kshetra)
The Nallamala forest where, by the tradition of the place, Bhagwan Narasimha burst from the pillar and killed Hiranyakashipu. Nine Narasimha shrines are scattered over the hills.
StandingHaridwar
Gangadwara, the gate where the Ganga leaves the hills for the plains, and Mayapuri, one of the seven moksha-giving cities. The evening aarti at Har ki Pauri is watched by thousands every day.
StandingKamakshi Amman Temple, Kanchipuram
The seat of Devi Kamakshi, seated in padmasana, and in Kanchi the only shrine of the Devi, for all other temples in the town are said to have none of their own. Adi Shankaracharya installed the Shri Chakra before her.
StandingDharwad
A fort town on the edge of the Malnad that changed hands between Vijayanagara, Bijapur, the Mughals, the Marathas and Mysore, and in 1824 was the seat of the collector Thackeray, whose attempt to seize Kittur ended in his death at Rani Chennamma’s gates.
RuinedHazara Rama Temple, Hampi
The private temple of the Vijayanagara kings in the royal centre, its walls carved with the Ramayana in long running bands. Hazara Rama means ‘a thousand Ramas’.
StandingShri Nagesh Temple, Bandivade
One of the few great Goan temples that never had to flee: it stood in Ponda, beyond Portuguese rule, and an inscription of 1413 already records gifts to it. Its wooden friezes carry the whole Ramayana and Mahabharata.
StandingBaleshwar Temple, Champawat
The royal Shiva temple of the Chand kings in Champawat, their capital before Almora. Its stone is carved over every surface, and the group is protected by the ASI.
RuinedCandi Sukuh
A stepped stone temple on the slopes of Mount Lawu, one of the last Hindu temples built in Java before Islam became the faith of the island’s courts.
StandingChaumukha Temple, Ranakpur
A four-faced Jain temple in a wooded Aravalli valley, built by the merchant Dharna Shah on land given by Rana Kumbha of Mewar. It has 1,444 carved pillars, and tradition says no two are alike.
StandingKumbhalgarh
Rana Kumbha’s mountain fortress on the Aravalli crest, its wall running some 36 km round the hills. Maharana Pratap was born here in 1540, and the fort was taken only once, in 1578.
StandingKumbha Shyam and Meera Temples, Chittorgarh
Two Vishnu temples in one compound on Chittor fort, raised in the reign of Rana Kumbha. The smaller one is known as Meera’s temple, where she sang to Giridhar Gopal.
StandingVijay Stambha, Chittorgarh
The nine-storey tower of victory that Rana Kumbha raised on Chittor hill after beating Mahmud Khalji of Malwa. Every face of it, inside and out, is carved with the gods of Sanatan Dharma, and the stairs climb within to the top.
StandingMale Mahadeshwara Temple, MM Hills
A forest shrine on the hills along the Tamil Nadu border, where the saint Mahadeshwara, revered as Shiva himself, is said to have lived and gone into the earth. Lakhs come from both states.
StandingAmbalappuzha Sri Krishna Temple
The Krishna temple of the backwater country, famous for its pal payasam, and the place where the Guruvayur murti was kept safe during Tipu Sultan’s invasion of 1789.
StandingUma Maheswara Temple, Yaganti
A Vijayanagara temple under the cliffs of the Erramala hills, where Shiva and Parvati are worshipped together in one murti, and where the stone Nandi in front is said to have grown so much that a pillar had to be removed.
StandingMehrangarh, Jodhpur
The Rathore fortress on Bhaurcheeria hill, about 125 m above Jodhpur. Rao Jodha moved here from Mandore in 1459; the fort was held by the Mughals from 1679 until Ajit Singh and Durgadas Rathore won Jodhpur back in 1707.
StandingMerta
The Rathore town of the Mertiya clan, where Meerabai grew up worshipping Krishna as Charbhuja in her grandfather Rao Duda’s temple. Its Mertiya chiefs, Jaimal among them, were famous fighters.
StandingNankana Sahib
The town, once called Talwandi, where Guru Nanak Dev was born in 1469 and spent his boyhood. Its gurdwaras mark each episode of his early life; Gurdwara Janam Asthan stands on the house of his birth.
RebuiltDwarkadhish Temple, Dwarka
The western dham of the Char Dham, Shri Krishna’s city on the Gomti creek, where the five-storeyed Jagat Mandir flies a flag changed several times a day.
RebuiltCandi Cetho, Mount Lawu
A terraced mountain sanctuary at about 1,500 metres on the western slope of Mount Lawu, among the last temples built in Java before the courts turned to Islam. It is still a place of worship, and Hindus from the villages around keep its festivals.
StandingSakshi Gopal Temple, Satyabadi
The temple of Gopal who, in the katha told in the Chaitanya Charitamrita, walked from Vrindavan to bear witness for a poor brahmin’s promise. Pilgrims to Puri stop here so that Gopal may witness their pilgrimage.
StandingNabadwip and Mayapur
The twin towns on the Bhagirathi where Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in 1486. Before that Nabadwip was the last capital of the Sena kings and the seat of Navya-Nyaya, the new logic.
StandingAhmednagar Fort
The moated fort of the Nizam Shahi sultans, which passed to the Mughals, then the Marathas, then the British. Nana Phadnavis was held here in 1797, and Nehru wrote The Discovery of India here as a prisoner in 1942–45.
StandingBatadrava Than (Bordowa)
The birthplace of Srimanta Sankardev near Nagaon, where he set up the first than and kirtanghar of the Ekasarana tradition. It is the first place of pilgrimage for the satras of Assam.
StandingKeladi
The Malnad village near Sagar where Chaudappa Nayaka founded the Keladi line, Vijayanagara’s governors of the west coast who outlasted the empire by two centuries. Its Rameshwara temple was their family shrine.
StandingSultanpur Lodhi
The town on the Kali Bein where the young Guru Nanak worked as a storekeeper, went into the river one morning and came out three days later with the message ‘there is no Hindu, there is no Musalman’. Gurdwara Ber Sahib stands on the bank.
StandingGaltaji (Galta Peeth), Jaipur
A gorge in the hills east of Jaipur where a spring fills a chain of kunds, held to be the tapobhumi of the rishi Galava. It became the first peeth of the Ramanandi Vaishnavas of the north.
StandingPura Tanah Lot
A sea temple on a rock off the west coast of Bali, cut off from the shore at high tide. Tradition credits its founding to the Brahmin sage Dang Hyang Nirartha.
StandingTripura Sundari Temple, Udaipur
The Matabari of Tripura, a Shakti Peetha on a low hill shaped like a tortoise’s back, built by Maharaja Dhanya Manikya in 1501. Tradition says the right foot of Mata Sati fell here.
RebuiltKartarpur Sahib (Gurdwara Darbar Sahib)
The village on the Ravi where Guru Nanak spent his last years farming and keeping langar, and where he passed the Guruship to Guru Angad. Since 1947 it has stood a few kilometres inside Pakistan, reached from India by a corridor opened in 2019.
StandingEkambareswarar Temple, Kanchipuram
The earth (Prithvi) sthala of the Pancha Bhuta lingas, where Mata Parvati shaped a linga of sand under a mango tree. Its 11-tier rajagopuram is one of the tallest in the south.
StandingVirupaksha Temple, Hampi
The family deity of the Vijayanagara kings, who signed their grants ‘Shri Virupaksha’. When the city around it was destroyed in 1565, worship here went on.
RuinedVittala Temple, Hampi
The finest temple of Vijayanagara, with the stone chariot of Garuda in its court and pillars that ring when struck. It has stood empty of worship since 1565.
StandingRenuka Yellamma Temple, Saundatti
The hill shrine of Renuka, mother of Parashurama, above the Malaprabha near Saundatti, with the biggest Devi fairs of north Karnataka. It was long linked to the devadasi custom, which Karnataka abolished by law in 1982.
RuinedUdayagiri Fort (Nellore)
A great hill fort in the Eastern Ghats that the Gajapatis of Odisha won under Kapilendra Deva’s armies and Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara took back in 1514 after a long siege. From here he carried the image of Balakrishna to Hampi.
StandingCooch Behar
Capital of the Koch kings, who rebuilt Kamakhya and fought the Bengal Sultans and the Ahoms, survived Mir Jumla’s occupation in 1661, and stayed a princely state until it joined India in 1949.
StandingVrindavan
The forest of Tulsi on the Yamuna where Shri Krishna grazed cows and danced the Raas with the gopis. Rediscovered by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the six Goswamis in the 16th century, it now has thousands of temples.
RebuiltSrikalahasteeswara Temple, Srikalahasti
The air linga among the five element shrines of Shiva, on the Swarnamukhi river, where the hunter Kannappa offered his eyes. Its Vijayanagara gopuram fell in 2010 and has been rebuilt.
StandingMaghar
The small town east of Gorakhpur where Sant Kabir chose to die, leaving Kashi to show that liberation lies with Rama and not with a place. His samadhi and his mazar stand side by side.
StandingGovardhan
The low sandstone ridge of Braj that Shri Krishna held up on his little finger for seven days to shelter the people of Vraja from Indra’s rain. Pilgrims walk its 21-km parikrama barefoot, and the hill itself is worshipped as Giriraj.
RuinedChauragarh Fort
The Satpura hill fort where Rani Durgavati kept her treasure and her stronghold. After she fell fighting in 1564, her son Vir Narayan died defending it and the women of the fort burned themselves rather than be taken.
StandingSatras of Majuli
Majuli, a large river island in the Brahmaputra, holds the oldest living Vaishnava satras of Assam, the monasteries of Srimanta Sankardev’s Ek Sharana Naam Dharma.
RuinedLakshmi Narasimha (Ugra Narasimha) Monolith, Hampi
The largest image at Hampi is a Narasimha 6.7 metres high, cut from one boulder in 1528 and seated on the coils of Shesha with seven hoods above. Lakshmi once sat on his lap; only her hand on his back remains.
RebuiltShri Ram Janmabhoomi, Ayodhya
The birthplace of Shri Ram in Ayodhya, the capital of the Ikshvakus. A mosque stood on the spot from 1528; after five centuries of struggle and a unanimous Supreme Court judgment in 2019, a new temple was consecrated in 2024.
StandingVeerabhadra Temple, Lepakshi
A Vijayanagara temple on a tortoise-shaped rock, with the largest ceiling paintings of the empire, a pillar that does not touch the floor and a giant Nandi outside.
StandingDodda Basavana Gudi (Bull Temple), Bengaluru
A temple built round a single granite Nandi, about 4.5 metres high, on the Bugle Rock in south Bengaluru, raised by the city’s founder Kempe Gowda. Its groundnut fair has run for centuries.
StandingKarni Mata Temple, Deshnoke
The temple of Karni Mata, the Charan woman revered as a form of Durga and the kuldevi of the Rathores of Bikaner. Thousands of kabas, the holy rats of her family, live in the temple and eat from the same bowls as the pilgrims.
RebuiltGarhgaon
The Ahom capital east of Sivasagar from 1540, a city of bamboo hedges, embankments and carved wooden halls that Mir Jumla’s chronicler described with open wonder when the Mughal army took it in 1662. The brick Kareng Ghar standing today was built in the 1750s.
StandingRadha Raman Temple, Vrindavan
One of the seven old Goswami temples of Vrindavan, home of the Radha Raman murti that manifested from a shaligram shila for Gopal Bhatta Goswami in 1542. Unlike the other old murtis, it never left Vrindavan.
StandingEttumanoor Mahadeva Temple
A major Shiva temple of central Kerala, known for its mural of Shiva’s dance and for the Ezhara Ponnana, seven and a half elephants of gold shown to devotees once a year.
RuinedGingee (Senji) Fort
Three granite hills bound by one wall, Rajagiri, Krishnagiri and Chandrayandurg, which Shivaji took in 1677 and from which Chhatrapati Rajaram held off a Mughal siege for nearly eight years.
StandingShri Manjunatha Temple, Dharmasthala
A Shiva kshetra on the Netravati where Madhwa Vaishnava priests do the puja and a Jain family, the Heggades, are the hereditary administrators. Its free kitchen feeds thousands every day.
StandingGavi Gangadhareshwara Cave Temple, Bengaluru
A Shiva shrine in a natural cave in old Bengaluru, built so that on Makara Sankranti the evening sun passes between the horns of the Nandi outside and falls on the linga inside.
RebuiltKapaleeshwarar Temple, Mylapore
The great Shiva temple of old Madras, where Mata Parvati worshipped Shiva in the form of a peahen and where Tirugnanasambandar called a dead girl back to life. The shrine on the beach was lost in the Portuguese period and the temple was raised again inland.
RebuiltJalakandeswarar Temple, Vellore Fort
A Vijayanagara temple inside the moated Vellore Fort, famous for the carving of its kalyana mandapa. It stood without worship for long years while the fort passed from hand to hand, and puja was restored in 1981.
StandingKodandarama Temple, Vontimitta
The great Rama temple of the Rayalaseema, where the poet Bammera Potana is held to have composed his Telugu Bhagavatam. Since 2015 it has hosted Andhra Pradesh’s official Sri Rama Navami celebration.
StandingChilkur Balaji Temple
The Balaji temple by the Osman Sagar lake outside Hyderabad that takes no money: there is no hundi, no paid darshan and no special queue. Devotees walk eleven circuits to make a wish and 108 when it is granted.
StandingSamaleswari Temple, Sambalpur
The temple of Samalei Maa on the Mahanadi, presiding Devi of western Odisha, whose name the city of Sambalpur carries. The Chauhan rajas who founded Sambalpur in the 16th century built her temple.
StandingJabalpur and Garha
The city on the Narmada that grew around Garha, seat of the Gond kingdom Rani Durgavati ruled and died defending in 1564. Before the Gonds, Tripuri nearby was the capital of the Kalachuris, and at Bhedaghat their Chausath Yogini temple still crowns a hill above the marble gorge.
RuinedSankagiri Fort
A granite hill fort on the old road between Salem and Erode, with walls climbing the rock in rings. Here the Company hanged Dheeran Chinnamalai and his brothers on 31 July 1805.
StandingKumbakonam and the Mahamaham tank
The temple town where the pot of amrita came to rest after the pralaya. Every twelve years, at the Mahamaham, the holy rivers of Bharat are said to bathe in its tank.
StandingIkkeri
The second capital of the Keladi Nayakas, who held the Malnad and the coast after Vijayanagara fell. Its granite Aghoreshvara temple is all that remains of the city.
StandingGoindwal Sahib
The town on the Beas where Guru Amar Das made his seat, dug the baoli of 84 steps and made the langar a rule for every visitor. Guru Arjan was born here in 1563, and Akbar crossed the Beas here and visited him in 1598.
StandingHidimba Devi Temple, Manali
A four-tiered wooden pagoda in a deodar forest, raised in 1553 over a rock where Hidimba is said to have sat in tapas. The Rajas of Kullu took her as their grandmother-goddess, and Dussehra in Kullu cannot begin until she arrives.
StandingUllal
The small port south of Mangaluru where Rani Abbakka Chowta ruled and defied the Portuguese for decades in the 16th century, refusing their sea pass and tribute.
StandingRewari
The market town where Hemu began as a trader before rising to be crowned Vikramaditya in Delhi in 1556, and the seat of Rao Tula Ram, who led the Ahirwal country in the war of 1857.
StandingUdaipur
The lake city of the Sisodia Maharanas of Mewar, founded in 1559 and their capital after Chittor fell to Akbar in 1568. The Maharanas ruled from here as the diwans of Shri Eklingji, the true king of Mewar.
RebuiltMeenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, Madurai
The temple of the fish-eyed Devi who ruled Madurai as a Pandya princess and married Shiva. Plundered in 1311, it was raised again by the Nayaks into the city of fourteen gopurams that stands today.
RebuiltShri Mangesh Temple, Mangeshi
The Shiva of the Goud Saraswat families, carried across the Zuari in the 1560s to escape Portuguese demolitions, and housed since the 18th century in the white temple at Mangeshi.
StandingChinchwad
The town on the Pavana near Pune where the great Ganapatya saint Morya Gosavi took samadhi, and whose Dev family carried the Mangalmurti to Morgaon for centuries. It was also the home of the Chapekar brothers, hanged for the shooting of Rand in 1897.
StandingTaleju Temple, Kathmandu
The temple of the Mallas’ own Devi in Hanuman Dhoka, Kathmandu Durbar Square, raised by Mahendra Malla in 1564 on a stepped plinth above every other roof of the square. Its doors open to the public one day a year, during Dashain.
RuinedMadan Mahal Fort, Jabalpur
A small fort-palace perched on a granite boulder ridge above Jabalpur, built by the Gond kings of Garha and linked by tradition with Rani Durgavati, who died fighting Akbar’s army near here in 1564.
StandingAgra and the Agra Fort
The Mughal capital on the Yamuna, where Shivaji was held under house arrest in 1666 and escaped, and which the Jats, the Marathas and finally the British each took in turn. The Taj Mahal and the red sandstone fort face each other across a bend of the river.
RebuiltShri Damodar Temple, Zambaulim
The Shiva of Margao, carried away when his temple in the town was destroyed in the 1560s and set up on the bank of the Kushavati at Zambaulim. His Gulal festival at Shigmo is one of the most colourful in Goa.
RebuiltKamakhya Temple
On Nilachal hill above the Brahmaputra stands the most revered of the Shakti Peethas of the east, where the Kalika Purana says the yoni of Mata Sati fell. There is no murti in the garbhagriha, only a cleft in the rock kept wet by a spring.
RuinedPenukonda
The hill fortress to which the Vijayanagara court withdrew after the sack of Hampi in 1565, and from which the Aravidu kings kept the empire alive.
RebuiltShri Ramnath Temple, Ramnathi
A Shiva temple whose name recalls the linga Shri Rama worshipped on his return from Lanka. It was carried out of Portuguese Salcete in the 1560s and set up in the Ponda hills, where it is a panchayatana of five deities.
RebuiltShri Mahalasa Narayani Temple, Mardol
The kuladevi of many Goud Saraswat and other Konkani families: Bhagwan Vishnu as Mohini, worshipped as Mahalasa. Her murti was carried out of Portuguese Salcete to safety at Mardol in the 1560s.
StandingEttayapuram
A small palace town of the black-cotton country where Muthuswami Dikshitar spent his last years and died on Deepavali 1835, and where Subramania Bharati was born in 1882. Its chiefs also sided with the Company against Kattabomman, which Tamil memory has not forgotten.
RuinedMurud-Janjira
The island fortress off Murud on the Konkan coast, held by the Siddis of Abyssinian descent as allies of Bijapur and then the Mughals. Shivaji, Sambhaji and the Peshwas all besieged it and none took it, and Shivaji built Padmadurg on the next rock to watch it.
StandingGogunda
A town on a high shoulder of the Aravallis north-west of Udaipur where Maharana Udai Singh II died and Maharana Pratap was crowned in 1572. From here Pratap rode out to Haldighati in 1576.
StandingChaturbhuj Temple, Orchha
A towering temple raised on a high plinth at Orchha to house the Rama that Rani Ganesh Kunwari brought from Ayodhya. Rama would not leave the palace, so the temple went to Vishnu.
StandingRam Raja Temple, Orchha
The only temple where Shri Rama is worshipped as a reigning king. Brought from Ayodhya by a Bundela queen, the murti was set down in her palace and would not be moved; the palace became the temple.
StandingHaldighati
A narrow pass of yellow, turmeric-coloured earth between Khamnore and Balicha, about 40 km from Udaipur, where Maharana Pratap met Akbar’s army under Man Singh of Amber on 18 June 1576. Chetak’s chhatri stands where the wounded horse fell.
RebuiltAmritsar
The city of the pool of nectar, founded by the fourth Sikh Guru around the tank in which the Harmandir Sahib stands. Twice blown up by Ahmad Shah Abdali and twice rebuilt, it is the heart of the Sikh faith, the Dharmic sibling of the Hindus.
StandingRadha Madan Mohan Temple, Vrindavan
The tall red sandstone temple on the Dwadashaditya mound above the old Kaliya Ghat, the oldest standing temple of Vrindavan’s Goswami age. The original murti, worshipped by Sanatana Goswami, was carried to Rajasthan in the 17th century and is now at Karauli.
StandingAttock Fort
The fort over the Indus crossing where Maratha horsemen watered their horses in 1758 and the Sikh army beat the Afghans in 1813. To say a thing ‘reached Attock’ became a Marathi way of saying it reached the farthest frontier.
RebuiltHayagriva Madhava Temple, Hajo
The Vishnu temple on Manikuta hill at Hajo, 30 km west of Guwahati, with a frieze of elephants carved along its base. Buddhists of the Himalaya also come here, holding it a place of the Buddha.
StandingBarpeta Satra
The great satra of lower Assam, founded by Sankardev’s chief disciple Madhavdev in 1583, where the Name of Hari has been sung in the kirtanghar for more than four centuries. Its Doul festival at Holi is the largest in Assam.
RuinedChavand, Maharana Pratap’s Last Capital
The village in the southern Aravallis that Maharana Pratap made his capital around 1585, from which he won back most of Mewar, and where he died on 19 January 1597. The ruins of his palace and the Chamunda temple he built still stand.
RebuiltGuruvayur Sri Krishna Temple
The four-armed Vishnu of Guruvayur is worshipped as the child Krishna, and the temple is called the Dwarka of the south. Here Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri finished the Narayaniyam in 1586.
RuinedGovind Dev Temple, Vrindavan
The red sandstone temple Raja Man Singh of Amber raised for Govind Dev in 1590, the largest temple north India had seen in centuries. In 1670 the murti was carried away to Kachwaha country ahead of Aurangzeb’s order, and it is worshipped in Jaipur to this day; the building stands without its upper storeys.
StandingTarn Taran Sahib
The town and sarovar founded by Guru Arjan Dev in 1590, south of Amritsar. Its tank is the largest of any gurdwara, and its name means ‘the boat that carries across’.
StandingAmber Fort and Shila Devi
The hill palace of the Kachwaha rajas above Maota lake, capital of Dhundhar until Sawai Jai Singh II founded Jaipur in 1727. Its Shila Devi temple is still the family shrine of the house.
StandingChamunda Devi (Chamunda Nandikeshwar Dham), Kangra
The temple of Chamunda on the Baner stream below the Dhauladhar, near Palampur. Devi and Mahadev are worshipped here together, so the place is called Chamunda Nandikeshwar Dham.
StandingSankat Mochan Hanuman Temple, Varanasi
The Hanuman temple of Tulsidas on the Assi stream, where, by the Kashi tradition, he had darshan of Hanuman. A bomb exploded here on 7 March 2006; the temple held aarti that evening and its music festival a few weeks later.
StandingThe Ghats of Kashi
Some eighty-four stone ghats run for nearly seven kilometres along the crescent of the Ganga from Assi to Raj Ghat. At Manikarnika the cremation fires never go out.
StandingTerracotta Temples of Bishnupur
The capital of the Malla kings, who became devout Vaishnavas and covered their brick temples with terracotta panels of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Krishna-leela.
RuinedChandragiri Fort
The last seat of the Vijayanagara emperors, near Tirupati. From its Raja Mahal the grant was made in 1639 that let the English build Fort St George, the start of Madras.
StandingPadmanabhapuram Palace
The wooden palace of the Travancore kings at Thuckalay, the largest of its kind in Kerala’s style, and their capital until 1795. Marthanda Varma rebuilt it and walled the town in granite.
RebuiltSri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar
The holiest gurdwara of the Sikhs, set in the Amrit Sarovar dug by Guru Ram Das, where Guru Arjan Dev installed the Adi Granth in 1604. Afghan armies desecrated and blew it up in the 18th century; the Khalsa rebuilt it each time.
StandingDindigul Rock Fort
A bare granite whaleback in the middle of Dindigul, walled by the Madurai Nayakas in 1605 and fought over by Mysore and the Company. In the 1770s the country around it sheltered Rani Velu Nachiyar of Sivaganga while she built the army that won her kingdom back.
StandingSrirangapatna
An island in the Kaveri, sacred to Ranganatha as the first of the five Rangas along the river. It was the Wodeyar capital from 1610, then the seat of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who died here in the siege of 4 May 1799.
StandingJhansi Fort
The Bundela fort on Bangra hill that became the seat of Rani Lakshmibai, who held it against Sir Hugh Rose’s army in March–April 1858 and broke out when it fell. It is the fort of ‘Khoob ladi mardani’.
StandingPune
The town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.
StandingManakamana Temple, Gorkha
A two-roofed pagoda temple of the Devi on a ridge above the meeting of the Trishuli and the Marsyangdi. Nepalis come here to ask for what the heart wants, and come back to give thanks when it is granted.
StandingShivneri Fort
The fort above Junnar where Jijabai gave birth to Shivaji in 1630, and named him after the hill’s goddess, Shivai. Its cliffs are full of Buddhist caves two thousand years old.
StandingPura Ulun Danu Beratan, Bedugul
The lake temple of Bali’s central highlands, its tiered meru shrines standing on the water of Lake Beratan. Built in 1633, it honours Dewi Danu, whose lake waters the rice terraces of the region below.
StandingKasba Ganpati, Pune
The guardian Ganapati of Pune, whose temple Jijabai built when she came to resettle the ruined town with the boy Shivaji. In the immersion procession of Ganeshotsav he always goes first.
RebuiltKrishna Mandir, Patan
A stone shikhara temple of three storeys and twenty-one pinnacles on Patan Durbar Square, built by Siddhi Narasimha Malla in 1637. Its stone friezes carry the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in scenes cut with captions in Newari.
RuinedBidanur (Nagara)
The hill capital of the Keladi Nayakas in the Malnad forests, from which Rani Chennamma ruled and sheltered Chhatrapati Rajaram in 1689. Haidar Ali took it with its treasure in 1763.
RebuiltLal Mahal, Pune
The red house Shahaji built in Pune for Jijabai and the boy Shivaji, where Shivaji grew up and where, on the night of 5 April 1663, he fell upon the Mughal general Shaista Khan in his own bedchamber.
StandingTorna (Prachandagad) Fort
The first fort Shivaji took, at about sixteen, the opening move of Swaraj. It is the highest fort in the Pune district.
StandingShahjahanpur
A Rohilkhand town on the Garra river, birthplace of Ram Prasad Bismil and of his comrade Ashfaqulla Khan. Three of the four men hanged for the Kakori action came from this town and its district.
StandingPurandar Fort
Twin-peaked fort south-east of Pune where Sambhaji was born in 1657, where Murarbaji Deshpande fell holding off the Mughals in 1665, and where Shivaji signed away twenty-three forts that same summer.
StandingRajgad Fort
Shivaji’s first capital, for some twenty-five years, on a hill of three spurs in the Sahyadri south-west of Pune. His son Rajaram was born here, and his first queen Saibai died here.
StandingShri Raghunath Temple, Kullu
The temple of Raghunath at Sultanpur, Kullu, whose murti was brought from Ayodhya in the time of Raja Jagat Singh. Since then Raghunath has been the true ruler of Kullu, and his rath leads the Kullu Dussehra.
StandingDakshinkali Temple, Pharping
The Kali of the south of the Kathmandu valley, worshipped in a wooded gorge where two streams meet below Pharping. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, and through Dashain, the courtyard is full of families bringing animals for bali.
StandingDehu, Sant Tukaram’s Village
The Indrayani village of Sant Tukaram, whose abhangas are sung in every Marathi home. The river that once gave back his drowned verses still runs below the temple.
RebuiltJagdish Temple, Udaipur
The largest temple of Udaipur, raised by Maharana Jagat Singh I just below the City Palace and in worship since 1651. Mughal troops attacked it in 1680; it was repaired and its Rath Yatra still fills the old city.
RuinedRohida Fort (Vichitragad)
The hill fort above Bhor that was the seat of the Bandal deshmukhs of Hirdas Maval. When Shivaji took it in 1656, the Bandals’ record-keeper Baji Prabhu Deshpande, who had fought against him, came into his service.
StandingPratapgad Fort
The fort Shivaji built to hold the Javli valley, at whose foot he met and killed Afzal Khan on 10 November 1659. That day saved the young Maratha state.
RuinedVishalgad
The Sahyadri fort Shivaji reached on the night of 13 July 1660 after escaping the siege of Panhala, while Baji Prabhu Deshpande held the pass at Ghodkhind behind him. The samadhis of Baji Prabhu and his brother Phulaji are on the fort.
StandingChamundeshwari Temple, Chamundi Hill
The family goddess of the Wodeyars on the hill above Mysuru, the city named after the buffalo-demon she killed. On Vijayadashami her murti rides through the city on the golden howdah of the Dasara elephant.
StandingTulja Bhavani Temple, Tuljapur
The kuldevi of the Bhosale house and of much of Maharashtra, in a temple sunk into a ravine of the Balaghat hills. Chhatrapati Shivaji worshipped her before his campaigns.
StandingPavan Khind
The narrow gorge, once called Ghod Khind, where Baji Prabhu Deshpande and his Bandal Mavalas held back the Bijapur pursuit on 13 July 1660 until Shivaji reached Vishalgad. Shivaji renamed it Pavan Khind, the hallowed pass.
RebuiltJalpesh Temple, Jalpaiguri
The great Shiva temple of north Bengal near Maynaguri, its domed Koch-era building rising over a linga that sits in water below floor level. Shravan and Shivaratri bring pilgrims from Bengal, Assam, Bhutan and Nepal.
StandingSindhudurg Sea Fort
Shivaji’s sea fort on the rock island of Kurte off Malvan, built to check the Siddis, the Portuguese and the English. Inside is the only temple where Shivaji himself is worshipped.
RebuiltAnandpur Sahib
The town in the Shivalik foothills where Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa on Vaisakhi 1699. It held out against the hill rajas and the Mughals until December 1704, and Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib stands where the Panj Pyare were initiated.
RebuiltTakht Sri Patna Sahib
Takht Sri Harimandir Ji in old Patna marks the house where Guru Gobind Singh was born in 1666 and spent his first years. It is one of the five Takhts, the seats of authority of the Khalsa Panth.
StandingBhubaneswari Temple, Udaipur (Tripura)
A small Bengal-roofed Devi temple on the Gomati beside the ruined palace of Govinda Manikya in the old Tripura capital of Udaipur. Rabindranath Tagore set his novel Rajarshi and his play Bisarjan here.
DestroyedItakhuli Fort, Guwahati
The Mughal fort on Itakhuli hill on the south bank of the Brahmaputra at Guwahati, taken by Lachit Borphukan in November 1667 and again by Gadadhar Singha’s army in 1682, when the Mughals were driven out of Assam for good. The Sukreswar temple now stands on the hill.
RebuiltSaptakoteshwar Temple, Narve
The family deity of the Kadamba kings of Goa, destroyed twice, by the Bahmanis in the 14th century and the Portuguese in 1560, and raised again at Narve on Shivaji’s order in 1668.
StandingLeaning Temple of Huma
A Shiva temple on a rock in the Mahanadi, 23 km south of Sambalpur, whose whole body leans to one side while its kalasha stays upright. Pilgrims come for Bimaleswara and to feed the tame kudo fish of the river.
StandingRajouri (Rajapuri)
Rajapuri of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, a hill kingdom on the Pir Panjal road into Kashmir, and the birthplace in 1670 of Banda Singh Bahadur. In 1947–48 it was overrun by raiders and retaken by the Indian Army.
StandingSinhagad (Kondhana) Fort
The fort south-west of Pune that Tanaji Malusare took back from the Mughals by a night climb in February 1670, dying in the fight. Shivaji renamed it Sinhagad, the lion’s fort.
StandingSri Raghavendra Swamy Mutt, Mantralayam
On the Tungabhadra at Mantralayam, the Madhva saint Raghavendra Tirtha entered his brindavana alive in 1671, and devotees hold that he is present in it still. Lakhs come each year from Karnataka, Andhra and Maharashtra.
StandingLachit Borphukan’s Maidam, Hoollongapar
The earth-mound tomb near Jorhat in which the Ahom king Udayaditya Singha laid the remains of Lachit Borphukan, victor of Saraighat, after his death in 1672. Since 2024 a great bronze statue of Lachit stands at the site.
StandingShrinathji, Nathdwara
The chief seat of the Pushti Marg of Shri Vallabhacharya. The swaroop of Shrinathji was carried out of Braj in 1669 to save it from Aurangzeb’s temple demolitions and came to rest in Mewar in 1672.
StandingManakula Vinayagar Temple, Puducherry
The Ganesh temple in the old French quarter of Puducherry, close to the sea, which was already worshipped when the French founded their town. Its golden chariot and walls painted with Ganesh’s many forms draw every visitor to the city.
StandingPuducherry (Pondicherry)
The French enclave on the Coromandel coast where Subramania Bharati wrote his greatest poems in exile from 1908 to 1918, and where Sri Aurobindo came in 1910 and stayed for forty years.
StandingSita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam
Rama’s temple on the Godavari, built by a Golconda revenue officer with the Sultan’s taxes, for which he spent twelve years in prison. His songs are still sung all over the south.
RuinedRaigad Fort
The hill capital where Shivaji was crowned Chhatrapati on 6 June 1674 and where he died in 1680. His samadhi stands on the summit among the ruins of the palace and the market street.
RebuiltGurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, Delhi
The gurdwara in Chandni Chowk on the spot where Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, was beheaded in November 1675 on Aurangzeb’s orders, after he stood up for the Kashmiri Pandits’ right to keep their faith.
StandingPanna
The Bundelkhand town that Chhatrasal made the capital of his free kingdom, paid for by the diamond mines around it. His guru Mahamati Prannath lived and attained samadhi here, and the town is the chief tirtha of the Pranami faith.
RebuiltGurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib, Delhi
The gurdwara beside Parliament House on the spot where Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanjara cremated the body of Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1675, by setting fire to his own house so the Mughal guards would not know.
StandingSajjangad
The hill fort of Parali near Satara where Samarth Ramdas spent his last years at Shivaji’s request and took samadhi in 1682. Renamed Sajjangad, the fort of the good, it is the chief tirtha of the Ramdasi sampradaya.
StandingMallikarjuna Jyotirlinga, Srisailam
The second of the twelve Jyotirlingas in the Shiva Purana’s list, on a forested ridge above the Krishna. Shiva and Shakti are worshipped here together, Mallikarjuna and Bhramaramba.
StandingRamanathapuram (Ramnad)
The seat of the Sethupathi kings, hereditary guardians of the causeway and of the Rameswaram temple, and the birthplace of Rani Velu Nachiyar. In its Ramalinga Vilasam palace Kattabomman faced down the Company’s collector in 1798.
StandingSangameshwar
A Konkan town where the Shastri and Sonvi rivers meet, with the old stone Karneshwar temple of Shiva. On 1 February 1689 Chhatrapati Sambhaji was surprised and captured here by Mughal troops with his minister Kavi Kalash.
StandingTulapur and Vadhu Budruk, Sambhaji’s Samadhi
The confluence of the Bhima, Indrayani and Bhama near Pune, where Chhatrapati Sambhaji was put to death on Aurangzeb’s order in March 1689 after refusing to submit. His samadhi is at Vadhu Budruk across the river.
StandingKolkata (Calcutta)
The city that grew from three Hooghly villages around a Company factory, capital of British India until 1911, and the birthplace of the Bengal renaissance and of the Swadeshi movement. Kalighat gave it its name.
RebuiltJagannath Temple, Ranchi
A hilltop copy of the Puri temple on the south edge of Ranchi, built in 1691 by a Nagvanshi thakur. Its Ashadh Rath Yatra and mela are the great festival of the Chotanagpur plateau, shared by tribal and non-tribal villages alike.
StandingRanchi
The chief town of the Chhotanagpur plateau, where Birsa Munda died in the British jail on 9 June 1900. The old jail is now a memorial to him, and Jharkhand, born on his birth anniversary in 2000, has its capital here.
StandingShri Prannath Temple (Padmavati Puri Dham), Panna
The chief shrine of the Shri Krishna Pranami faith, built over the place where Mahamati Prannath, guru of Maharaja Chhatrasal, lived and took samadhi. Pranamis call Panna Padmavati Puri Dham.
RebuiltUmananda Temple
A Shiva temple on Peacock Island, a rock in the middle of the Brahmaputra at Guwahati, built in 1694 on the orders of the Ahom king Gadadhar Singha.
StandingJoysagar Temples (Joydol), Sivasagar
The temples on the bank of the Joysagar, one of the largest man-made tanks in India, which the Ahom king Rudra Singha dug in honour of his mother Joymoti, who died under torture in 1680 rather than betray her husband.
StandingRaniji ki Baori, Bundi
The queen’s stepwell of Bundi, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati of the Hada house, some 46 metres deep, with carved gateways and images of Vishnu’s avatars on its walls.
StandingMaluti Temples, Dumka
A village on the Jharkhand–Bengal border with some seventy-two small terracotta temples still standing out of a once larger number, built by the rajas of Maluti over two centuries. Their brick walls carry panels of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Durga slaying Mahishasura.
StandingNyatapola Temple, Bhaktapur
The five-roofed pagoda of Taumadhi Square, about 33 metres high and the tallest temple in Nepal. Bhupatindra Malla built it in six months and it has stood through the earthquakes of 1934 and 2015.
StandingJagdishpur
The seat of the Ujjainiya Rajputs of Bhojpur and of Babu Kunwar Singh, who at about eighty led the rising of 1857 in Bihar. He came home to Jagdishpur to win his last battle on 23 April 1858 and died three days later.
StandingNagpur
A Gond town on the Nag river that became the capital of the Bhonsles of Nagpur, the Maratha house that rode into Bengal and Odisha. In 1925 Dr K. B. Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh here.
StandingThanthania Kalibari, Kolkata
One of the oldest Kali temples of Kolkata, on Bidhan Sarani in the College Street quarter, older than the city itself in its present form. Sri Ramakrishna came here and sang to Maa Siddheshwari.
StandingKantajew Temple, Kantanagar
The finest terracotta temple of Bengal, raised by the rajas of Dinajpur over half a century and covered on every face with baked-clay panels of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Krishna’s lila. It once had nine towers; the earthquake of 1897 brought them all down.
StandingChamkaur Sahib
The village where Guru Gobind Singh, with some forty Sikhs in a mud fortress, held off a Mughal army in December 1704, and where his elder sons Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh fell fighting. Gurdwara Garhi Sahib and Gurdwara Katalgarh Sahib stand on the spots.
RebuiltGurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib
The place outside Sirhind where Guru Gobind Singh’s youngest sons, Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, aged about nine and seven, were walled up and put to death in December 1705 on the orders of Wazir Khan, faujdar of Sirhind, for refusing to give up their faith.
StandingSatara and Ajinkyatara
The town below Ajinkyatara fort where Chhatrapati Shahu was crowned in 1708 and ruled for forty-one years, while his Peshwas carried Maratha arms across Bharat. In 1848 it became the first state the British took under the doctrine of lapse.
RebuiltTakht Sachkhand Sri Hazur Sahib, Nanded
One of the five takhts of the Sikhs, on the Godavari at Nanded, built over the place where Guru Gobind Singh was cremated in October 1708 after declaring the Guru Granth Sahib his successor. Here too he sent Banda Singh Bahadur north to the Punjab.
StandingKolhapur (Karavira)
The Devi’s city of Karavira on the Panchganga, seat of the Shilahara kings and later of the senior Bhonsle line that Tarabai founded. Under Shahu Maharaj in the early 1900s it became a workshop of social reform.
RuinedLohgarh, Banda Singh Bahadur’s fort
The hill fort near Sadhaura that Banda Singh Bahadur made the capital of the first Sikh state in 1710, where he struck coins in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh. Bahadur Shah’s army stormed it in December 1710.
RebuiltWalkeshwar Temple and Banganga Tank
On the tip of Malabar Hill, a Shiva temple and a stepped tank tied to Shri Rama’s halt on the way to Lanka. Destroyed in the Portuguese period and rebuilt in 1715, it is the oldest continuously sacred spot in south Mumbai.
StandingMariamman Temple, Samayapuram
One of the most visited Devi temples of Tamil Nadu, near Tiruchirappalli, where Mariamman is prayed to against fever and pox. In the month of Masi the Devi herself keeps a fast of 28 days for her people.
StandingPrachin Hanuman Mandir, Connaught Place
The old Hanuman temple on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, older than New Delhi itself, where Hanuman is worshipped in his child form. The chant of Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram has gone on here without a break since 1 August 1964.
RebuiltUgratara Devalaya, Guwahati
The temple of Ugratara in Uzan Bazaar, Guwahati, built by the Ahom king Siva Singha in 1725 beside the Jorpukhuri tanks. There is no murti: the Devi is a small pit of water in the sanctum.
StandingVaradvinayak Temple, Mahad (Khalapur)
The Ashtavinayaka where Rishi Gritsamada did tapas and Ganesha stayed as the giver of boons. Here devotees may enter the sanctum and touch the murti themselves.
StandingGovind Dev Ji Temple, Jaipur
The Govind Dev of Vrindavan, the deity Rupa Goswami served, brought away from Braj in the troubled years of the late 17th century and enshrined by Sawai Jai Singh II in his new city. The kings of Jaipur ruled as his diwans.
StandingJaipur
The walled city Sawai Jai Singh II laid out on the plain below Amber in 1727, on a grid of broad streets and blocks drawn by his architect Vidyadhar Bhattacharya. Govind Dev rules it from the palace garden, and the Jantar Mantar measures its sky.
StandingJantar Mantar, Jaipur
The open-air observatory of nineteen masonry instruments that Sawai Jai Singh II built beside his palace, the largest of the five he raised. Its Samrat Yantra, about 27 m high, is the largest stone sundial in the world; the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010.
StandingTaraknath Temple, Tarakeswar
The Baba Dham of Bengal, 58 km from Kolkata. Every Shravan lakhs of devotees carry Ganga water barefoot from Sheoraphuli to pour on Baba Taraknath.
StandingAnnapurna Temple, Varanasi
The temple of Annapurna beside Kashi Vishwanath, where Mahadev himself is said to beg his food. An 18th-century Annapurna murti stolen from Varanasi about a century ago came back from Canada and was installed in the Vishwanath Dham in November 2021.
RuinedJaitpur
The Bundelkhand fort where the aged Chhatrasal was besieged by the Mughal governor Muhammad Khan Bangash in 1729, and from which he sent his famous appeal to Bajirao I. Bajirao rode north and turned the siege around.
StandingJyotiba Temple, Wadi Ratnagiri
A hilltop temple north of Kolhapur, kuladaivat of lakhs of Marathi families, where at the Chaitra Purnima yatra the whole hill turns pink with gulal. Jyotiba is held to have come to help Mahalakshmi of Kolhapur against the demon Ratnasura.
StandingSivaganga
Capital of the small Maravar kingdom that Rani Velu Nachiyar won back from the Nawab of Arcot and the Company in 1780. The Marudhu brothers ruled it for her and fell defending it in 1801.
RebuiltSree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Thiruvananthapuram
One of the 108 Divya Desams, sung by Nammalvar, where Bhagwan Vishnu lies on Ananta with a lotus rising from his navel. In 1750 Marthanda Varma laid his sword before the deity and the kings of Travancore ruled thereafter as Padmanabhadasa, servants of Padmanabha.
RuinedShaniwar Wada, Pune
The palace-fort of the Peshwas, from which the Maratha confederacy was run for nearly ninety years. A fire in 1828 left only the walls and gates.
StandingLohagarh Fort, Bharatpur
The ‘iron fort’ of the Jat kings, ringed by a moat and thick earth ramparts that swallowed cannonballs. In 1805 it threw back four British assaults under Lord Lake, and it fell only in 1826.
StandingIndore
The Malwa town granted to Malhar Rao Holkar by the Peshwa, which grew round the seven-storeyed Rajwada into the Holkar capital. Its name is tied to Ahilyabai, who ruled the Holkar lands from 1767 to 1795 and rebuilt temples from Somnath to Kashi.
StandingSivadol, Sivasagar
The tall Shiva temple of the Ahom capital Rangpur, raised in 1734 on the bank of the great tank of Sivasagar, with a Vishnu temple and a Devi temple beside it.
RebuiltMumba Devi Temple, Bhuleshwar
The Devi of the Koli fishermen, from whose name Mumbai takes its own. Her shrine stood near Bori Bunder until the 18th century, when it was rebuilt at Bhuleshwar beside a tank.
RebuiltShri Shantadurga Temple, Kavlem
The Devi who made peace between Shiva and Vishnu, carried from Quelossim to Kavlem after the Portuguese sacked her temple in the 1560s. Her present temple was built in 1738 with an endowment from a minister of Chhatrapati Shahu.
StandingVajreshwari Yogini Devi Temple
The Maratha general Chimaji Appa vowed a temple to Vajreshwari if he took Vasai fort from the Portuguese. He took it in 1739 and built this one, walled like a small fort, on a hill near the hot springs of the Tansa valley.
StandingKhandoba Temple, Jejuri
Sonyachi Jejuri, golden Jejuri, the hill shrine of Khandoba south-east of Pune, where devotees climb through clouds of turmeric. Khandoba is the kuladaivat of a great many Maharashtrian families, the Holkars among them, and a church bell brought from Vasai in 1739 still hangs in his temple.
StandingRaverkhedi
A village on the north bank of the Narmada between Maheshwar and Omkareshwar where Peshwa Bajirao I, who never lost a battle, died of fever on 28 April 1740. His samadhi stands on the riverbank.
RuinedUdayagiri Fort, Puliyoorkurichi
The great fort of old Travancore near Padmanabhapuram, rebuilt in stone for Marthanda Varma by the Flemish captain De Lannoy, who had been taken prisoner at Kolachel in 1741 and served the king for the rest of his life. His grave lies inside.
StandingSukreswar Temple, Guwahati
A Shiva temple on Itakhuli hill above the Brahmaputra in Panbazar, Guwahati, with one of the largest lingas in Assam. A long flight of steps runs down to the Sukreswar Ghat, where families perform shraddha for the dead.
StandingParvati Hill Temples, Pune
The Peshwas’ temple hill above Pune, built from 1749 by Nanasaheb Peshwa. He came here to die in 1761, broken by the news of Panipat.
StandingBawe Wali Mata (Mahakali), Bahu Fort, Jammu
The Kali temple inside Bahu Fort, on the cliff above the Tawi, is the guardian goddess of Jammu. Jammu people call her Bawe Wali Mata, and after Vaishno Devi she draws the largest crowds in the region.
StandingHanuman Garhi, Ayodhya
The hilltop fort-temple of Hanuman in Ayodhya, reached by 76 steps, where by custom pilgrims take Hanuman’s leave before darshan of Shri Ram Lalla. It is held by the Nirvani Akhara of the Ramanandi bairagis.
RebuiltNageshwarnath Temple, Ayodhya
The Shiva temple at Ram ki Paidi on the Sarayu which, by Ayodhya’s tradition, Kusha founded for a Naga maiden devoted to Shiva. The present temple was built in 1750 by Naval Rai, minister of Nawab Safdar Jang.
StandingVenkateswara Temple, Dwaraka Tirumala
Chinna Tirupati, the little Tirupati of the Godavari delta, named after the sage Dwaraka who found the self-manifest Venkateswara in an anthill on this hill.
StandingBhimashankar Jyotirlinga
One of the twelve Jyotirlingas, high in the Sahyadri forest where the Bhima river is born. The black-stone temple sits in a hollow below the ridge, wrapped in cloud for half the year.
StandingSalasar Balaji Temple
A Hanuman temple in the Shekhawati sand country, built around a murti a farmer’s plough struck at Asota in 1754. It is one of the most visited Hanuman shrines in north India.
RuinedKumher Fort
The mud-walled Jat stronghold where Suraj Mal held out for four months in 1754 against a Maratha army and its Mughal allies. Malhar Rao Holkar’s son Khande Rao was killed by a shot from its walls.
RuinedNerkattumseval
The seat of Puli Thevar, the palaiyakkarar who from 1755 refused tribute to the Nawab of Arcot and the East India Company and was among the first in the south to fight them. His mud-and-stone fort fell to Yusuf Khan’s guns in 1761.
StandingTirunelveli and the Nellaiappar Temple
The old city on the Thamirabarani, centred on the twin temple of Nellaiappar and Kanthimathi. Its country was the ground of the palaiyakkarar wars of Puli Thevar and Kattabomman, and of the 1908 rising after VOC’s arrest.
RebuiltTrimbakeshwar Jyotirlinga
The Jyotirlinga at the foot of Brahmagiri, where the Godavari rises. In its hollow sanctum three small lingas stand for Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh together.
StandingDeeg Palace (Jal Mahal)
The summer palace of the Jat rajas of Bharatpur, with halls set between two tanks and hundreds of fountains, built by Maharaja Suraj Mal in the 1750s and 1760s. In 1804 Yashwantrao Holkar’s army fought the British under its walls.
StandingKangeyam
A dry-country town of the Kongu Nadu, known for its beryl mines worked in Roman times and its Kangayam bulls. Dheeran Chinnamalai, who fought the Company in the Kongu country, was born at nearby Melapalayam in 1756.
StandingPlassey (Palashi)
The village on the Bhagirathi, named for its palash trees, where on 23 June 1757 Robert Clive’s small army defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah because the Nawab’s own commanders had been bought. From here the East India Company took Bengal, and from Bengal, Bharat.
StandingDurga Temple (Durga Kund), Varanasi
The red ochre temple of Durga beside its square tank in south Banaras, built by Rani Bhabani of Natore in Bengal. The Devi Bhagavata links the shrine with the Devi who fought for King Subahu of Kashi and Prince Sudarshan.
StandingBallaleshwar Temple, Pali
The only Ashtavinayaka that carries a devotee’s name. Shri Ganesh appeared here to a boy, Ballal, whom his own father had beaten and tied to a tree for worshipping a stone.
RuinedKunjpura Fort
The Afghan fort on the Yamuna that Sadashivrao Bhau stormed on 17 October 1760, three months before Panipat. The garrison and its commanders, including the man who had beheaded Dattaji Shinde, were killed.
RuinedUdgir Fort
The fort town near which Sadashivrao Bhau beat the Nizam’s army in February 1760, winning for the Marathas lands worth sixty lakh rupees a year. It was the high point of Maratha power a year before Panipat.
DestroyedVasudevanallur
A town at the foot of the Western Ghats whose fort was one of Puli Thevar’s strongholds in his twelve-year war against the Nawab of Arcot and the Company. Little of the fort survives.
StandingPanipat
A plain north of Delhi where three battles decided who would rule Hindustan: Babur’s in 1526, Hemu’s last stand in 1556, and the Marathas’ great fight against Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1761.
StandingGauri Shankar Temple, Chandni Chowk
The Shiva temple at the eastern end of Chandni Chowk, near the Red Fort, built in 1761 by a Maratha officer who vowed it after surviving a battle. Its linga is worshipped as one of the oldest in Delhi.
StandingMoti Dungri Ganesh Temple, Jaipur
Jaipur’s Ganesh, at the foot of the little Moti Dungri hill, brought to the city in 1761. Every wedding invitation in Jaipur goes to him first, and every new car is brought here for puja.
RebuiltKalkaji Mandir, Delhi
The temple of Kalka Devi on the Aravalli spur in south Delhi, after which the whole locality is named. The Devi here is held to be swayambhu, and the shrine is among the oldest places of worship in the city.
StandingBasistha Temple and Ashram, Guwahati
The hermitage of Maharshi Vashishtha, by Assam’s tradition, in a wooded valley at the south-east edge of Guwahati, where three mountain streams meet. The Ahom king Rajeswar Singha built the Shiva temple here in 1764.
RebuiltNegheriting Shiva Doul, Golaghat
A panchayatana Shiva temple on a hillock near Dergaon, rebuilt in brick by Rajeswar Singha in 1765 in place of an older stone temple that the Buranjis mention in the wars with the Kacharis.
StandingAlampur, Chhatri of Malhar Rao Holkar
The village near Bhind where Malhar Rao Holkar, founder of the Holkar house of Indore, died on campaign on 20 May 1766. His daughter-in-law Ahilyabai built the chhatri over his ashes.
StandingMaheshwar (Mahishmati)
Mahishmati of the Itihasa, city of the thousand-armed Kartavirya Arjuna, and later the capital of Ahilyabai Holkar, who ruled here from 1767 to 1795. Her fort and ghats run down to the Narmada.
StandingRanchhodraiji Temple, Dakor
The temple of Ranchhodrai, the Krishna of Dwarka who, Dakor’s own Mahatmya says, came here with his aged devotee Bodana. On Sharad and Kartik Purnima the whole of central Gujarat seems to walk to Dakor.
RebuiltKal Bhairav Temple, Ujjain
The temple of Kal Bhairav at Bhairavgarh on the Shipra, the guardian of Mahakal’s city, to whom liquor is offered and accepted. No pilgrimage to Ujjain is complete without his darshan.
StandingKhajrana Ganesh Temple, Indore
Indore’s own Ganesh, a murti hidden in a well in Aurangzeb’s time and set up again under Ahilyabai Holkar. The Bhatt family has served it for generations.
StandingBarrackpore
The cantonment on the Hooghly above Kolkata where sepoy Mangal Pandey fired the first shot of 1857 on 29 March and was hanged on 8 April. Thirty-three years earlier sepoys refusing to sail for Burma had been shot down on the same parade ground.
StandingKalaiyar Kovil
The Shiva temple and forest stronghold of the Sivaganga rajas, sung by Sundarar in the Tevaram. Here Raja Muthu Vaduganatha Thevar fell to the Company’s army in 1772, and here the Marudhu brothers made their last stand in 1801.
StandingTheur and the Chintamani Temple
One of the eight Ashtavinayak shrines of Shri Ganesh, near the meeting of the Mula-Mutha and Bhima. Peshwa Madhavrao I loved it above all places and died here on 18 November 1772.
StandingKakati
A village a few kilometres north of Belagavi, once the seat of a small line of Desais, where Rani Chennamma of Kittur was born in 1778. She grew up here riding and learning the sword before her marriage into the Kittur house.
StandingKanpur (Cawnpore)
The Ganga town where the Company kept a great cantonment and where, in June and July 1857, Nana Saheb’s forces besieged and destroyed the British garrison. It became one of the bitterest names of that war on both sides.
StandingBabulnath Temple, Mumbai
A Shiva temple on the hillock above Girgaum Chowpatty, named for the babul tree under which the linga was found. Its tall spire was once among the highest points of the city.
StandingGujranwala
The town north of Lahore where the Sukerchakia chiefs built their fort, where Maharaja Ranjit Singh was born on 13 November 1780 and Hari Singh Nalwa in 1791. Its Hindu and Sikh people left at Partition in 1947.
StandingMenavali
The Krishna-side village near Wai where Nana Phadnavis, the minister who held the Peshwa state together after Panipat, built his country wada, a stone ghat and temples. A great bell from the Portuguese church at Vasai hangs at the ghat.
StandingNana Wada, Pune
The town house that Nana Phadnavis built for himself in 1780, a few steps from Shaniwar Wada, from which the Peshwa’s chief minister ran the Maratha state for a quarter of a century.
RebuiltKashi Vishwanath
The Jyotirlinga of Kashi, the city Shiva never leaves, where death on the ghats is said to bring moksha. The temple was destroyed in 1194 and 1669 and stands today beside the mosque built on its old plinth.
RebuiltGrishneshwar Jyotirlinga, Verul
The twelfth Jyotirlinga, a red-stone temple in the village of Verul, a short walk from the Ellora caves. Destroyed in the wars of the Sultanate and Mughal centuries, it was raised again by Shivaji’s grandfather and then by Ahilyabai Holkar.
RebuiltGurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, Delhi
The gurdwara in Chandni Chowk on the spot where Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded on Aurangzeb’s orders in November 1675. His companions Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayala were put to death here before him.
StandingDevasathan, Bangkok
The temple of the Thai royal court’s Brahmins, founded by Rama I in 1784 when he built Bangkok, with three shrines to Shiva, Ganesh and Vishnu. In front of it stands the Giant Swing, used for the Triyampawai rite until 1935.
RebuiltVishnupad Temple, Gaya
On the bank of the Phalgu, a footprint of Bhagwan Vishnu about 40 cm long is pressed into a basalt rock, set in a silver basin. Gaya is the first tirtha for pinda-daan, and Ahilyabai Holkar raised the present temple over it in 1787.
StandingKalaram Temple, Panchavati, Nashik
The black-stone Rama of Panchavati, where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana lived by the Godavari during the vanavasa. In 1930 Dr Ambedkar led a satyagraha here for the right of all Hindus to enter.
StandingShinde Chhatri, Pune
The memorial of Mahadji Shinde at Wanowrie, where the great Maratha general died on 12 February 1794. A small Shiva temple stands beside the samadhi hall.
StandingLahore (Lavapura)
The old capital of Punjab on the Ravi, part of the Hindu Shahi realm until Mahmud’s conquest, and from 1799 to 1849 the capital of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Sikh empire. At Partition in 1947 nearly all its Hindus and Sikhs had to leave.
StandingKayathar
The village where the palayakkarar Veerapandiya Kattabomman of Panchalankurichi was hanged by the Company on 16 October 1799, in front of the chiefs of the district who had been summoned to watch.
RebuiltPanchalankurichi
The seat of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, whose mud fort threw back the Company’s storming party in 1799. The British razed it twice; the Tamil Nadu government built a memorial fort on the site in 1974.
RuinedOdanilai
The Kongu village near Arachalur where Dheeran Chinnamalai built his fort after 1799 and fought the East India Company until he was taken and hanged in 1805. A state memorial now stands here.
StandingTiruttani
The hill where Murugan rested, his anger calmed, after the war with Surapadman, and where he wed Valli. One of the six Padai Veedu, it is where Muthuswami Dikshitar sang his first kriti; S. Radhakrishnan was born in the town in 1888.
RebuiltShri Siddhivinayak Temple, Prabhadevi
Mumbai’s best-loved Ganesh temple, founded in 1801 by a childless woman who asked that Ganapati grant children to other barren women. The small black-stone murti draws lakhs of devotees on Tuesdays and on Angarki Chaturthi.
StandingTiruppathur (Sivaganga)
The town where the Marudhu brothers, Periya and Chinna Marudhu, were hanged by the Company on 24 October 1801 with their kin and followers. Its old Shiva temple was sung in the Tevaram.
StandingBadrinath
The northern dham of the Char Dham, on the Alaknanda between the Nar and Narayan ranges, where Bhagwan Narayan sits in tapas. Adi Shankaracharya is said to have recovered the murti from the river and set it back in worship.
StandingPanakala Narasimha Temple, Mangalagiri
One of the eight great Narasimha kshetras of Andhra, where the open mouth of Narasimha on the hill drinks exactly half of whatever jaggery water is poured in, and gives back the rest as prasad.
StandingGangotri
The shrine of Ganga at 3,100 m on the Bhagirathi, where King Bhagiratha’s tapas brought her down from heaven. The true source, Gaumukh, lies some 18 km further up the glacier.
StandingTemples of Ambika Kalna (Naba Kailash and the Rajbari)
A town on the Bhagirathi where the Bardhaman Raj built a cluster of terracotta temples, crowned by the Naba Kailash: 108 Shiva temples in two rings, one for each bead of a japa mala.
StandingKundara
The town near Kollam where Velu Thampi, Dalawa of Travancore, issued his Malayalam proclamation of 11 January 1809, calling on the people to rise and drive out the Company.
StandingMannadi
The village near Adoor where Velu Thampi, Dalawa of Travancore, took refuge in the Bhagavathy temple in March 1809 and died by his own hand rather than be taken by the Company’s troops.
RebuiltKalighat Kali Temple, Kolkata
One of the Shakti Peethas, where the toes of Sati’s right foot fell, on the old course of the Ganga called Adi Ganga. The city of Kolkata is said to take its name from Kalikshetra.
RebuiltDaksheswar Mahadev Temple, Kankhal
The temple at Kankhal that marks the place of Daksha Prajapati’s yajna, where Mata Sati gave up her body in the sacrificial fire. Haridwar’s tradition holds that Mahadev spends the month of Shravan here.
StandingMata Mansa Devi Mandir, Panchkula
The Devi temple in the Shivalik foothills above Chandigarh, built by the raja of Mani Majra. The two Navratri melas here draw lakhs of pilgrims from Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.
StandingBhanpura, Chhatri of Yashwantrao Holkar
The Holkar town in north-west Malwa where Yashwantrao Holkar, the Maratha chief who fought the Company alone in 1804–05, spent his last years and died on 28 October 1811. His chhatri, with a life-size statue of him, stands on the edge of the town.
StandingHangseshwari Temple, Bansberia
A thirteen-spired temple of Kali on the Hooghly, each spire shaped as a lotus bud, built to the plan of the human body as the Tantras describe it. Beside it stands the terracotta temple of Ananta Basudeba.
StandingDwarkadhish Temple, Mathura
The Pushtimarg temple near Vishram Ghat built in 1814 by Seth Gokul Das Parikh with the support of Daulat Rao Scindia. Its Hindola swing festival in Shravan is the great sight of Mathura in the monsoon.
StandingUjjaini Mahankali Temple, Secunderabad
The Devi temple of old Secunderabad, founded in 1815 by a soldier who vowed at Ujjain, during a cholera epidemic, to bring Mahakali home. Its Lashkar Bonalu in Ashadha is the great festival of the twin cities.
StandingBithoor (Brahmavarta)
Brahmavarta on the Ganga above Kanpur, honoured as the place of Brahma’s yajna and of Valmiki’s ashram, where the last Peshwa lived in exile and where Nana Saheb, Tatya Tope and the girl who became Rani Lakshmibai grew up together.
StandingMhow (Dr. Ambedkar Nagar)
The army cantonment south of Indore where Bhimrao Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891, the son of an army subedar. The town now bears his name, and the Bhim Janmabhoomi memorial stands on the site of his birth.
StandingTarapith
The seat of Maa Tara on the Dwarka river in Birbhum, beside a great cremation ground, made famous in the 19th century by the siddha Bamakhepa. Many count it among the Shakti Peethas, where the third eye of Sati fell.
StandingJalaram Bapa Temple, Virpur
The home of Jalaram Bapa, the Lohana saint who began feeding every passer-by in 1820 and never stopped. Since 2000 the temple has refused all donations, and still feeds everyone.
RebuiltKoteshwar Mahadev Temple, Kutch
A Shiva temple on a sandstone mound at the western edge of Kutch, where the land ends at the Kori Creek and the sea. Pilgrims to Hinglaj Mata were told to come here after, for Koteshwar is her Bhairava.
StandingKishtwar
A town on a high shelf above the Chenab, once the seat of its own rajas, from which Zorawar Singh led the Dogra army over the passes into Ladakh in 1834. The Machail Mata yatra climbs up from its district every summer.
StandingShri Swaminarayan Mandir, Kalupur, Ahmedabad
The first temple of the Swaminarayan Sampradaya, consecrated by Swaminarayan himself in 1822 in the old city of Ahmedabad. It is the seat of the Nar-Narayan Dev Gadi.
StandingHaripur
The town Hari Singh Nalwa founded in 1822 when Ranjit Singh made him governor of Hazara, with a fort to hold the hill country between the Indus and Kashmir. It was the headquarters of Hazara until the British took the Punjab.
StandingJammu
The city of temples on the Tawi, seat of the Dogra rajas from whom Gulab Singh built a Himalayan state reaching Ladakh, Baltistan and Kashmir. Its Raghunath temple, begun in 1835, holds one of the great Sanskrit manuscript libraries of the north.
StandingPuthia Temple Complex
The largest group of old Hindu temples in Bangladesh, built by the zamindar rajas of Puthia around the Shyam Sagar lake east of Rajshahi. Its great five-spired Shiva temple of 1823 is the largest Shiva temple in the country.
StandingShri Swaminarayan Mandir, Vadtal
The second great temple Swaminarayan consecrated, in 1824, and the seat of the Lakshmi Narayan Dev Gadi. Here in 1826 he wrote the Shikshapatri, the code of conduct of his followers.
RuinedKittur Fort
The fort of the Desais of Kittur, where Rani Chennamma refused in 1824 to hand her state to the Company and her men killed the Collector of Dharwad at the gates. It fell that December; its ruins now hold a museum.
RebuiltYogmaya Mandir, Mehrauli
The temple of Yogmaya, Shri Krishna’s sister, beside the Qutb complex in Mehrauli, held by Delhi tradition to be among the oldest Devi shrines of the city. It is the Hindu half of the Phool Walon ki Sair, the flower-sellers’ fair.
RebuiltSri Mariamman Temple, Singapore
The oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, founded in 1827 by Naraina Pillai, who came to the island with Stamford Raffles. Its yearly firewalk, Theemithi, draws thousands.
StandingBailhongal, Samadhi of Kittur Chennamma
The town near Kittur where Rani Chennamma was held prisoner in the fort after the Company took her capital in December 1824, and where she died on 21 February 1829. Her samadhi stands in a small garden in the town.
StandingNongkhlaw
The seat of the Khasi state of Nongkhlaw, whose Syiem, U Tirot Sing, fought the East India Company for four years from 1829 rather than let its road run through his hills.
StandingMahalakshmi Temple, Mumbai
The temple of the three Devis of the Devi Mahatmya on a rock above the Arabian Sea at Breach Candy. Its katha is tied to the building of the Hornby Vellard, the causeway that joined Bombay’s islands.
StandingGopal Mandir (Dwarkadhish), Ujjain
The second largest temple of Ujjain, a marble Maratha temple in the middle of the bazaar built by a Scindia queen. On Vaikuntha Chaturdashi Mahakal comes here at midnight to hand the world back to Hari.
StandingLeh
The old caravan town under its nine-storey palace, capital of the Namgyal kings, which Zorawar Singh brought under Jammu in the 1830s and from which he marched into Tibet in 1841. In 1948 an Indian Dakota landing here helped save Ladakh.
StandingRaghunath Temple, Jammu
A complex of seven shrines in the heart of Jammu, raised by the first two Dogra Maharajas, whose gilded spires gave Jammu the name City of Temples. Its library of Sanskrit manuscripts is one of the great collections of the north.
StandingJamrud Fort (Fatehgarh)
The fort Hari Singh Nalwa built in 54 days at the mouth of the Khyber Pass in 1836, the farthest western bastion of the Sikh empire. He fell defending it against the Afghans on 30 April 1837.
StandingShri Sanwaliya Seth Temple, Mandaphiya
Krishna as Sanwaliya Seth, the dark one who is also a merchant, whose murti a cowherd dug up after a dream in 1840. Traders of Mewar and Malwa make him a partner in their business and bring him his share.
StandingSkardu and the Kharpocho Fort
The chief town of Baltistan on the Indus, taken for the Dogra state of Jammu by Zorawar Singh in 1840. In 1948 its garrison held out against invaders for six months before falling.
StandingSrikanteshwara (Nanjundeshwara) Temple, Nanjangud
The Dakshina Kashi on the Kapila (Kabini) river, where Shiva is worshipped as the lord who swallowed the poison from the churning of the ocean. Its towering gopura is one of the tallest in Karnataka.
RebuiltShri Govindaji Temple, Imphal
The royal temple of Manipur, home of Shri Govindaji, whose murti Maharaja Bhagyachandra had carved and consecrated in 1779, and the heart of Manipuri Vaishnava life and the Ras Lila.
StandingThiruvaiyaru
The town of five rivers on the Kaveri where Saint Tyagaraja lived, sang and attained samadhi in January 1847. Every January the great musicians of the south sit at his samadhi and sing his Pancharatna kritis together.
StandingKashtbhanjan Dev Hanuman Temple, Sarangpur (Salangpur)
A Hanuman temple of the Vadtal Swaminarayan diocese in the village of Sarangpur, where people come for release from afflictions. Hanuman here crushes a demoness under his foot.
StandingSri Rangji (Ranganatha) Temple, Vrindavan
A South Indian temple in the heart of Braj, built in the Dravidian style with a tall gopuram for the Sri Vaishnava worship of Ranganatha. Every spring it holds a Brahmotsava with a great wooden chariot every spring.
StandingSri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, Singapore
One of Singapore’s oldest temples, built on Serangoon Road by Tamil settlers in 1855 and first dedicated to Narasimha. Its 20-metre gopuram of 1966 is the landmark of Little India, and every Thaipusam the kavadi procession starts from its gate.
StandingDakshineswar Kali Temple
The navaratna temple of Kali on the Hooghly that Rani Rashmoni built, where Sri Ramakrishna served as priest and lived for some thirty years. Here Narendranath Datta, later Swami Vivekananda, came to him.
StandingRatnagiri
The Konkan port town where Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born in 1856, and where Vinayak Savarkar was confined from 1924 to 1937 and opened the Patit Pavan Mandir to every Hindu. The last king of Burma lived here in exile.
StandingArrah (Ara) and the Arrah House
The headquarters of old Shahabad district, where in July 1857 the sepoys of Danapur and Kunwar Singh’s men besieged a small British party in a fortified house for eight days. The house still stands in the town.
RuinedThe Residency, Lucknow
The compound of the British Resident at Lucknow, where the British garrison was besieged by the forces of Awadh from 30 June to November 1857. Its shot-scarred ruins have been kept as they were left.
StandingMandalay
The last royal capital of Burma, which became after 1885 the British jail of choice for Indian nationalists they wanted far from home. Tilak wrote the Gita Rahasya in its prison between 1908 and 1914.
StandingMeerut
The cantonment town where, on the evening of 10 May 1857, the sepoys rose, freed their shackled comrades and rode through the night to Delhi. The war of 1857 began here.
StandingKalpi
The old Kalapriya on the Yamuna, a Surya tirtha sacked by the Rashtrakutas, where Rana Sanga died in 1528 and where Rani Lakshmibai, Tatya Tope and Rao Saheb made their stand against Hugh Rose in May 1858. Tradition holds it the birthplace of Maharshi Vyasa.
StandingPort Blair (Sri Vijaya Puram)
The harbour town of the Andamans, founded as a penal colony for the fighters of 1857 and later home of the Cellular Jail, the Kala Pani. Here on 30 December 1943 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose raised the tricolour on Indian soil. In 2024 it was renamed Sri Vijaya Puram.
RebuiltSri Thendayuthapani Temple (Chettiars’ Temple), Singapore
The Murugan temple the Nattukottai Chettiar bankers built on Tank Road in 1859, and the end point of Singapore’s Thaipusam. Rebuilt in 1983, it was gazetted a national monument in 2014.
StandingShivpuri
A forest town south of Gwalior where Tatya Tope, the last great commander of 1857, was tried and hanged on 18 April 1859. The marble chhatris of the Scindias stand in a garden here.
StandingBanke Bihari Temple, Vrindavan
The most visited temple of Vrindavan, home of the murti that appeared to the singer-saint Swami Haridas in Nidhivan. Krishna stands here in the tribhanga pose, bent in three places, and the curtain is drawn every few minutes so that no devotee looks too long.
StandingPorbandar (Sudamapuri)
The Saurashtra port held to be the home of Sudama, Shri Krishna’s boyhood friend, and the town where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869. Kasturba was born here too, the same year.
RebuiltSri Mahamariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur
The oldest functioning Hindu temple in Malaysia, founded in 1873 by the Tamil leader K. Thamboosamy Pillai on the edge of Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. Every Thaipusam its silver chariot sets out from here through the night to Batu Caves.
StandingNadiad
The Charotar town where Vallabhbhai Patel was born on 31 October 1875 and which was the base of the Kheda satyagraha of 1918. Gujarat calls it Saksharbhumi, the land of the lettered, for its writers.
StandingUlihatu
The forest village of the Munda country where Birsa Munda was born on 15 November 1875. His birthday is kept as Jharkhand’s foundation day and, across India, as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas.
StandingShri Swami Samarth Math, Akkalkot
Swami Samarth came to Akkalkot in 1856 and stayed twenty-two years under a banyan tree, and Maharashtra came to him. His words “Bhiu nakos, mi tujhya pathishi ahe”, do not fear, I am behind you, hang in countless homes.
StandingSri Maha Mariamman Temple, Bangkok
The main Tamil temple of Thailand, built in 1879 on Silom Road by Vaithi Padayatchi, a leader of the Tamil traders of Bangkok. Thais call it Wat Khaek, and as many Thai Buddhists come to pray here as Hindus.
StandingBhagur, Savarkar’s Birthplace
The small town on the Darna river near Nashik where Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was born on 28 May 1883. The family house, the Savarkar wada, is kept as a memorial.
StandingZiradei
The village in Siwan district where Dr Rajendra Prasad, first President of India, was born on 3 December 1884. His family house still stands and is kept as a memorial.
StandingMaheswarnath Mandir, Triolet
The largest Hindu temple of Mauritius, the ‘Grand Shivala’ of Triolet, founded in 1888 by a pandit who had come from Calcutta. It is tied to the first pilgrimage to Ganga Talao, the sacred lake of the island.
StandingMidnapore (Medinipur)
The district of Khudiram Bose and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, where young revolutionaries killed three British magistrates in a row in 1931–33 and where the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar ran a parallel government in 1942–44.
StandingShri Swaminarayan Mandir, Karachi
The only Swaminarayan temple left in Pakistan, on M. A. Jinnah Road in old Karachi, its grounds over 32,000 square yards. In 1947 it was the camp where Sindhi Hindus waited for the ships to India.
StandingLaxmi Vilas Palace, Vadodara
The palace of the Gaekwads of Baroda, finished in 1890 for Sayajirao III, the reforming Maratha prince who made primary education free and compulsory in his state and sent the young Ambedkar to Columbia. The family still lives in it.
RebuiltKanak Bhawan, Ayodhya
The ‘golden palace’ that, by Ayodhya’s tradition, Mata Kaikeyi gave to Sita on her arrival as a bride. The present palace-temple was built in 1891 by the Bundela queen Vrishbhanu Kunwari of Orchha.
StandingVeera Venkata Satyanarayana Temple, Annavaram
The hill temple on the Pampa river where more Satyanarayana vratams are performed than anywhere else in India. Shiva and Vishnu share one murti here, and the temple is built in the form of a chariot.
StandingBatu Caves
A Murugan shrine in a limestone cave above Kuala Lumpur, reached by 272 steps beside a 42.7 m golden Murugan. Its Thaipusam, held since 1892, is one of the largest Hindu festivals outside Bharat.
StandingShrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati, Pune
Pune’s most famous Ganapati, set up by a sweet-maker who had lost his son, and bound up with the public Ganeshotsav that Lokmanya Tilak turned into a festival of the whole people in 1893.
StandingBelur Math
The headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission on the west bank of the Ganga at Howrah, founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1898. He left his body here on 4 July 1902.
StandingGanga Talao (Grand Bassin)
A crater lake in the hills of Mauritius that the descendants of indentured labourers made their own Ganga. On Maha Shivaratri lakhs walk here from every corner of the island carrying kanwars.
StandingCellular Jail (Kala Pani), Port Blair
The prison of solitary cells the British built at Port Blair to break India’s revolutionaries, where Savarkar and his brother, the Ghadar men and the Bengal revolutionaries served their sentences. It has been a national memorial since 1979.
StandingThoothukudi (Tuticorin)
The pearl port of the Gulf of Mannar, where V. O. Chidambaram Pillai launched the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company in 1906 to break the British hold on coastal shipping. The district is also the country of Veerapandiya Kattabomman.
StandingMuzaffarpur
The Tirhut town where, on 30 April 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage they took for Magistrate Kingsford’s. Khudiram was hanged in its jail on 11 August 1908, aged eighteen.
StandingShri Gajanan Maharaj Samadhi Mandir, Shegaon
On 23 February 1878 a young ascetic was seen at Shegaon picking grains of rice from discarded leaf plates. He became Gajanan Maharaj, and his samadhi is now one of the most visited and best-run shrines of Maharashtra.
StandingKalady
The village on the Periyar where Adi Shankaracharya was born to Shivaguru and Aryamba. The Amnaya Mathas’ reckoning places his birth c. 509 BCE; another widely used reckoning gives 788 CE.
StandingJanaki Mandir, Janakpur
A white marble palace-temple in Janakpur, the city of Raja Janaka, where Mata Sita was raised and married to Shri Rama.
StandingKheer Bhawani, Tulmul
The spring of Mata Ragnya Devi at Tulmul, the kuldevi of many Kashmiri Pandit families, worshipped with offerings of kheer poured into the water.
StandingPasupatheswarar Temple, Tiruvetkalam
The first of the Paadal Petra Sthalams in the traditional order, inside the Annamalai University campus at Chidambaram, where Shiva as a hunter gave Arjuna the Pashupata astra.
StandingAdyapeath, Dakshineswar
A temple and seva centre near Dakshineswar built for Adya Ma, whose small murti Sri Annada Thakur found, by his own account guided by a dream, in a pond of Kolkata’s Eden Gardens in 1915.
StandingTamenglong
The hill district of western Manipur where Rani Gaidinliu was born at Nungkao on 26 January 1915. From these hills she and her guru Haipou Jadonang led the Heraka movement against British rule.
StandingBanaras Hindu University
The university Madan Mohan Malaviya raised in Kashi on Vasant Panchami 1916, to teach the Shastras and modern science side by side. Its campus temple of Shri Vishwanath has one of the tallest shikharas in India.
StandingChamparan
The indigo country of north Bihar where Gandhiji led his first satyagraha in India in 1917, with Rajendra Prasad among the lawyers who wrote down the farmers’ statements. The same district holds Ashoka’s pillars at Lauriya Nandangarh and Rampurva and, by tradition, Valmiki’s ashram.
StandingSabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad
Gandhiji’s home on the bank of the Sabarmati from 1917 to 1930, from which he set out with 78 companions on the Dandi March on 12 March 1930, vowing not to return until India was free.
StandingShri Sai Baba Samadhi Mandir, Shirdi
The samadhi of Sai Baba, the fakir-saint who lived in Shirdi for about sixty years and left his body on Vijayadashami, 15 October 1918. It is now one of the most visited shrines in India.
StandingJallianwala Bagh, Amritsar
The walled ground near the Harmandir Sahib where, on Baisakhi, 13 April 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer’s troops fired on an unarmed crowd for about ten minutes without warning. The official count was 379 dead; Indian inquiries put it near a thousand.
StandingVadapalani Andavar Temple, Chennai
A devotee who could no longer walk to Palani set up a picture of Murugan in a hut in what was then a village west of Madras, and it became Vadapalani, the Palani of the north. It is now one of the most loved temples of Chennai and a favourite place to be married.
RebuiltDurgiana Temple, Amritsar
The chief Hindu temple of Amritsar, standing in the middle of a sarovar and reached by a causeway, built in the same form as the Harmandir Sahib. Beside it the Bada Hanuman temple holds the famous Langur Mela of Navratri.
StandingChintapalli
A village in the Eastern Ghats where Alluri Sitarama Raju opened the Rampa rising on 22 August 1922 by raiding the police station and carrying off its guns.
StandingGita Press, Gorakhpur
The press that put the Gita, the Ramcharitmanas, the Puranas and the Upanishads into almost every Hindu home at a price a labourer could pay. Founded in 1923, it has printed over 40 crore books and never takes advertisements in its monthly Kalyan.
StandingGorakhpur
The city on the Rapti that takes its name from Guru Gorakhnath, home of the Nath seat and of the Gita Press. In its jail Ram Prasad Bismil wrote his autobiography and was hanged on 19 December 1927.
StandingKoyyuru
The hill village of the Visakhapatnam agency where Alluri Sitarama Raju, leader of the Rampa rising of 1922–24, was captured and shot in custody on 7 May 1924.
StandingVaikom Mahadeva Temple
A great Shiva temple on the shore of Vembanad lake, famous for its feeding of pilgrims and for Vaikom Ashtami. The satyagraha of 1924–25 over the roads around it led, in 1936, to every Hindu in Travancore gaining entry to its temples.
StandingKakori
The town near Lucknow where, on 9 August 1925, revolutionaries of the Hindustan Republican Association stopped a train and took the government treasury it carried. Four of them, Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh, were hanged for it in December 1927.
RebuiltSri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple, Nadi
A Dravidian-style Murugan temple in Nadi, built by the Tamil-origin descendants of Fiji’s girmitiyas. Its present building, opened in 1994, is the largest Hindu temple in Fiji.
StandingMahad
The Konkan town at the foot of Raigad where, on 20 March 1927, Dr B. R. Ambedkar led thousands to drink from the Chavdar tank, a public water source then closed to communities treated as untouchable.
StandingBardoli
The farming taluka near Surat whose villages refused to pay a 22 per cent rise in land revenue in 1928 and won. Its women gave Vallabhbhai Patel the name Sardar.
StandingChandi Devi Temple, Haridwar
The temple of Chandika on Neel Parvat, across the Ganga from Haridwar, where the Devi is said to have rested after slaying Shumbha and Nishumbha. It is one of the three Siddha Peethas of Haridwar.
StandingDandi
The village on the sea near Navsari where Gandhiji ended his 385 km march from Sabarmati and picked up a lump of natural salt on the morning of 6 April 1930, breaking the British salt law.
StandingVedaranyam
The coastal temple town where the four Vedas worshipped Shiva, and where C. Rajagopalachari made salt on 30 April 1930 at the end of the southern salt march, the Tamil country’s answer to Dandi.
StandingBaba Ramdev Samadhi Temple, Ramdevra (Runicha)
The samadhi of Baba Ramdev, the Tanwar Rajput saint of Pokaran whom Rajasthan honours as Ramsa Pir and an avatar of Krishna. In Bhadrapada lakhs walk across the desert to it, flags on their shoulders.
StandingHussainiwala National Martyrs Memorial
The bank of the Sutlej near Firozpur where the bodies of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were secretly burnt on the night of their hanging, 23 March 1931. The spot fell to Pakistan in 1947 and was taken back by exchange of land in 1961.
RebuiltGorakhnath Math, Gorakhpur
The chief seat of the Nath yogis, built over the place where Guru Gorakhnath sat in tapas and holding his gaddi. On Makar Sankranti lakhs come to offer khichdi to Baba Gorakhnath.
StandingShri Kali Devi Mandir, Patiala
The Kali temple on the Mall at Patiala, built by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, who had a six-foot murti of Kali brought from Bengal. It is the most visited Devi temple of the Malwa plains.
StandingBharat Mata Mandir, Varanasi
A temple to the motherland on the campus of the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, where the object of worship is a relief map of undivided Bharat carved in Makrana marble. Gandhi opened it in 1936.
StandingShri Laxminarayan Temple (Birla Mandir), New Delhi
The first of the Birla Mandirs, raised on the ridge west of Connaught Place. Mahatma Gandhi opened it in 1939 on the condition that it be open to Hindus of every caste.
StandingPahari Mandir, Ranchi
The Shiva temple on Ranchi Hill, where the British hanged freedom fighters and where the national tricolour has flown beside the temple flags since Independence.
StandingParshuram Kund, Lohit
The pool on the Lohit where, the tradition holds, Parashurama washed his hands and the axe that had clung to them since he slew his mother at his father’s command finally fell away. Lakhs bathe here at Makar Sankranti.
RebuiltSabarimala Sree Dharma Sastha Temple
A forest shrine on a hill in the Periyar reserve, reached on foot after a 41-day vrata. Crores of pilgrims climb its eighteen holy steps each season, each calling the other ‘Swami’.
RebuiltTemple in the Sea (Sewdass Sadhu Shiva Mandir), Waterloo
An octagonal Shiva temple standing in the Gulf of Paria, joined to the shore by a causeway. A former indentured labourer, Sewdass Sadhu, built the first one there stone by stone because the sugar estate would not let him keep a temple on its land.
StandingDeekshabhoomi, Nagpur
The open ground in Nagpur where Dr B. R. Ambedkar took the Buddhist diksha on Ashoka Vijayadashami, 14 October 1956, and then gave it to lakhs of his followers. A great hollow stupa in the Sanchi manner now stands on the spot.
StandingErawan Shrine (Than Thao Mahaphrom)
A four-faced Brahma on a busy Bangkok corner, raised in 1956 and now one of the most visited shrines in Thailand. Thai Buddhists and visitors from across Asia come to pray and to keep vows.
StandingPashupatinath Temple, Mandsaur
A Shiva temple on the bank of the Shivna at Mandsaur, old Dashapura, built for an eight-faced linga that a washerman found in the riverbed in 1940. The linga is a masterpiece of Gupta-age sculpture.
StandingTulsi Manas Mandir, Varanasi
A white marble temple near Durga Kund on the spot associated with Goswami Tulsidas’s work on the Ramcharitmanas. The whole text of the Manas is carved on its walls.
StandingKainchi Dham (Neem Karoli Baba Ashram)
The ashram Neem Karoli Baba built in a forested bend of the Shipra stream on the Nainital–Almora road, around a Hanuman temple consecrated on 15 June 1964. That date is its great mela every year.
StandingTanot Mata Temple
A Devi temple a few kilometres from the Pakistan border, where in 1965 the shells that fell around the shrine did not go off. The Border Security Force has served the temple ever since.
StandingShri Vishwanath Mandir, Banaras Hindu University
The marble Shiva temple at the centre of the BHU campus, Malaviya’s idea of a Vishwanath temple open to every Hindu without distinction. Its shikhara is among the tallest in India.
RebuiltRamna Kali Mandir, Dhaka
The Kali temple of the Ramna racecourse in Dhaka, whose tall shikhara was a landmark of the city until the Pakistani army destroyed it on 27 March 1971 and killed the people sheltering there. The rebuilt temple was inaugurated in 2021.
StandingBhaktivedanta Manor, Watford
A Hertfordshire manor that the Beatle George Harrison bought for the Hare Krishna devotees in 1973 is now the largest Hindu pilgrimage place in Britain at Janmashtami. Srila Prabhupada lived and taught here, and it bears his name.
RebuiltVedapureeswarar Temple, Tiruverkadu
The shrine where the four Vedas stood as vel trees to worship Shiva, sung by Sambandar. Behind the linga, Shiva and Parvati are shown in their wedding form, as they appeared to Agastya.
StandingShri Adya Katyayani Mandir, Chhatarpur
A vast complex of white marble temples on the southern edge of Delhi, founded by Baba Sant Nagpal Ji in 1974 for Maa Katyayani. It is one of the largest temple complexes in India.
StandingSri Krishna Balaram Mandir (ISKCON), Vrindavan
The ISKCON temple at Raman Reti, opened by Srila Prabhupada in 1975, where he spent his last days and where his samadhi stands. It brought pilgrims from every continent to Vrindavan.
StandingBirla Mandir, Hyderabad
A white marble temple of Venkateswara on the Naubat Pahad hill above the Hussain Sagar lake, built by the Birla family over ten years and opened in 1976. It keeps no bells, so that the hill stays quiet for prayer.
StandingSri Venkateswara Temple, Pittsburgh
One of the first traditional Hindu temples built in the United States, modelled on Tirumala and consecrated in 1976. It made the hills east of Pittsburgh a pilgrimage for Hindus across North America.
StandingSri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthanam, Flushing
The Ganesh temple of Queens, consecrated on 4 July 1977, one of the first two traditional Hindu temples built by Indian immigrants in the United States. Its granite face in the South Indian style stands on Bowne Street in Flushing.
StandingMalibu Hindu Temple (Sri Venkateswara), Calabasas
A white temple of Venkateswara in the Dravidian style, built in 1981 in the Santa Monica Mountains off Malibu Canyon Road. With a Shiva temple below it, it is the main temple of the Hindus of Los Angeles.
StandingSri Sri Radha Radhanath Temple of Understanding, Durban
The great Krishna temple of Chatsworth, the Indian township of Durban, opened by ISKCON in 1985 in a lotus-shaped building set in a moat and gardens. It stands among the descendants of the indentured Indians who came to Natal from 1860.
StandingSri Venkateswara Temple, Helensburgh
A temple of Venkateswara in the bushland south of Sydney, consecrated in 1985 and counted by its community as Australia’s first Hindu temple built in the traditional style. It is listed as a local heritage item.
RebuiltMahavir Mandir, Patna
The Hanuman temple at the gate of Patna Junction, the busiest temple in Bihar, famous for its naivedyam laddu. Its trust, long led by Acharya Kishore Kunal, runs cancer and children’s hospitals from the offerings.
StandingBirla Mandir (Lakshmi Narayan Temple), Jaipur
A white-marble Lakshmi-Narayan temple at the foot of Moti Dungri, opened in 1988 by the Birla family. Its walls carry lines from the Gita and the Upanishads.
StandingSri Siva Vishnu Temple, Lanham
Outside Washington, D.C., the Hindus of the capital built a temple where Shiva and Vishnu are honoured side by side under one roof, its towers in the Chola style and its Guruvayurappan shrine in the Kerala manner. It is among the largest Hindu temples in North America.
StandingSwaminarayan Akshardham, Gandhinagar
The first Akshardham, a pink sandstone mandir with no steel in it, raised by the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha in Gujarat’s capital. In September 2002 two terrorists attacked it and killed 33 people.
StandingBAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Neasden
The first traditional carved-stone mandir in Europe, opened in August 1995 in a London suburb. Its white marble and limestone were carved in India and assembled here.
StandingISKCON Sri Radha Krishna Temple, Bengaluru
A large Radha-Krishna temple of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition on a hillock in north-west Bengaluru, opened in 1997. The midday-meal programme for schoolchildren that grew from it now feeds lakhs every day.
StandingISKCON Sri Sri Radha Parthasarathi Mandir, Delhi
The ISKCON temple on Hare Krishna Hill, East of Kailash, where Shri Krishna is worshipped as Parthasarathi, Arjuna’s charioteer. It holds the largest printed Bhagavad Gita in the world.
StandingShri Venkateswara (Balaji) Temple, Tividale
A temple of Balaji on the pattern of Tirumala, on a 30-acre site in the Black Country near Birmingham, opened in 2000 and consecrated in 2006. At its opening it held the largest temple grounds in Europe.
StandingDattatreya Mandir and Hanuman Murti, Carapichaima
A temple of Dattatreya in the Dravidian style, built by sthapatis from Tamil Nadu among the cane fields of central Trinidad, with an 85-foot standing Hanuman beside it, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.
StandingSri Kamadchi Ampal Temple, Hamm
The Kamakshi temple built by Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in an industrial estate of Hamm, consecrated in 2002 and described as the largest South Indian style Hindu temple in mainland Europe. Its yearly chariot festival is the great Hindu gathering of Germany.
StandingSwaminarayan Akshardham, New Delhi
The great stone mandir of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha on the bank of the Yamuna, carved from pink sandstone and white marble without any steel. Guinness World Records named it the world’s largest comprehensive Hindu temple in 2007.
StandingBAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Toronto
The first traditional carved-stone shikharbaddha mandir in Canada, built of some 24,000 hand-carved pieces of Italian marble, Turkish limestone and Indian pink stone. It was put up in eighteen months and opened in 2007.
RebuiltMurudeshwar
One of the five kshetras of the Atmalinga, on Kanduka hill jutting into the Arabian Sea, where a fragment of the linga’s covering fell. Today a giant seated Shiva looks out over the water.
StandingJakhu Hanuman Temple, Shimla
The Hanuman temple on Jakhu, the highest point of Shimla at 2,455 m. A tall orange murti of Hanuman, 108 feet high, rises above the deodars and can be seen from most of the town.
StandingSiddhesvara Dham (Char Dham), Namchi
A pilgrimage complex on Solophok hill above Namchi, opened in 2011, with a giant seated Shiva and copies of the four dhams and twelve Jyotirlingas, so that the hill people of Sikkim can take the darshan of all Bharat in one place.
StandingPrem Mandir, Vrindavan
The white marble temple of Radha-Krishna and Sita-Rama raised by Jagadguru Kripalu Maharaj on a 55-acre site at the edge of Vrindavan. It opened in February 2012 and is now one of the most visited places in Braj.
RebuiltDhari Devi Temple, Kaliyasaur
The guardian Devi of Garhwal, whose upper half is worshipped on the Alaknanda between Srinagar and Rudraprayag and whose lower half at Kalimath. Her murti was moved on 16 June 2013 for a hydro project, the evening before the Kedarnath flood.
StandingRam Tirath (Bhagwan Valmiki Tirath), Amritsar
The place west of Amritsar where the people of Punjab hold that Maharshi Valmiki had his ashram, where Mata Sita lived after leaving Ayodhya and where Lava and Kusha were born. Its Kartik Purnima fair is one of the oldest in Punjab.
StandingPartition Museum, Amritsar
A museum in Amritsar’s old Town Hall, a short walk from the Golden Temple, given wholly to the Partition of 1947: the trains, the camps, the lost homes, told mostly in the voices of those who lived through it.
StandingStatue of Unity
The 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on the Sadhu Bet islet in the Narmada, below the Sardar Sarovar dam. Unveiled on 31 October 2018, his birth anniversary, it is the tallest statue in the world.
RebuiltLakshmi Narasimha Temple, Yadagirigutta (Yadadri)
The great Narasimha shrine of Telangana, a cave on a hill 60 km from Hyderabad where Narasimha appeared in five forms to the sage Yada. In 2022 the whole hilltop was rebuilt in carved black granite.
StandingBAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham, Robbinsville
One of the largest Hindu temples in the world, on a 183-acre campus in New Jersey. It was dedicated in October 2023 after about twelve years of work, largely by volunteers.
StandingBAPS Hindu Mandir, Abu Dhabi
The first traditional stone Hindu mandir in the Middle East, built on land given by the UAE government. It was inaugurated on 14 February 2024, Vasant Panchami.
StandingPunaura Dham (Janaki Janmasthali), Sitamarhi
The place in Mithila held to be where Mata Sita came out of the earth when Raja Janaka ploughed the field. Here Sita is worshipped on her own, as Janaki, beside the pond called Sita Kund.