हिंदीOn this day
Ruined

Bhitargaon Brick Temple

The oldest surviving brick temple of the Hindus with a tall shikhara, built under the Guptas and covered with terracotta panels.

Built: c. 5th century CE, Gupta periodWhere: Uttar Pradesh (Kanpur Nagar)Deity: Now without a murti; the terracotta panels show Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and Ganesha26.21° N, 80.27° E
  1. c. 5th century
  2. 1908–09
Photo: Ms Sarah Welch · CC0

01Brick and fired clay

In the Gangetic plain there is little stone, so the Gupta builders worked in brick. At Bhitargaon they raised a square sanctum on a high plinth with a pyramidal shikhara above it, and used the arch, true voussoir arches set edge to edge, centuries before it became common in India. The outer walls carried terracotta panels: Vishnu on Shesha, Ganesha, Durga slaying the demons, river goddesses, and scenes now hard to read. Alexander Cunningham brought the temple to notice in the 1870s, and J. Ph. Vogel of the Archaeological Survey studied it in 1908–09.

02What remains

The upper chamber was damaged by lightning in the 19th century and the top of the shikhara is lost. Many of the best panels are now in museums, among them the Indian Museum in Kolkata and the State Museum in Lucknow. The ASI has protected and conserved the shell. It stands in a village field among mustard and wheat, about 50 km south of Kanpur.

The life of this place

  1. c. 5th centuryThe brick temple is built under the Guptas.
  2. 1908–09J. Ph. Vogel of the ASI studies the temple.
Visiting

Reach by road from Kanpur via Ghatampur. There are no facilities at the site; go in the cooler months.

Nearby

Kanpur (Cawnpore)Standing
Company rule and the war of 1857

Kanpur (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.

Bithoor (Brahmavarta)Standing
Company rule and the war of 1857

Bithoor (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.

KalpiStanding
Company rule and the war of 1857

Kalpi

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.

KakoriStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Kakori

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.