हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Mukteshwar 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.

Built: c. 950–975 CE, Somavamshi periodWhere: OdishaDeity: Shiva as Mukteshwara20.24° N, 85.84° E
  1. c. 950–975
Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0

01The torana

Before the temple stands a free gateway of two pillars and a rounded arch, carved with smiling female figures reclining along its curve and strings of beads. It frames the deula like a picture. The temple behind is the first in Bhubaneswar to have a jagamohana with a stepped pyramidal roof, the form the later Lingaraja and Jagannath halls would follow. Its walls show lean ascetics teaching under trees, monkeys from the Panchatantra, and nagas and naginis wound round pilasters.

02Siddharanya

Mukteshwar stands in a cluster the tradition calls Siddharanya, the grove of the siddhas, beside the larger Siddheshwar temple and a sacred tank, the Marichi Kunda, whose water women bathe in for the blessing of children. Kedar Gouri is a short walk away. Each January the Odisha government holds the Mukteshwar Dance Festival of Odissi on the temple’s lawn, with the lit torana behind the dancers. Shivaratri brings the old town’s families here with bilva leaves before dawn.

The life of this place

  1. c. 950–975The temple and its torana are built.
Visiting

Open to all; it sits off the Old Town road a short way from Lingaraja. Go at dusk when the torana is lit.

Nearby

Rajarani Temple, BhubaneswarStanding
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Rajarani 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.

Parasurameswara Temple, BhubaneswarStanding
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Parasurameswara 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.

Vaital Deula, BhubaneswarStanding
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Vaital 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.

Ananta Vasudeva Temple, BhubaneswarStanding
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Ananta 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.