हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Sivadol, 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.

Built: 1734, Bar Raja Ambika, queen of Ahom king Siva SinghaWhere: AssamDeity: Bhagwan Shiva26.99° N, 94.64° E
  1. 1734 CE
Photo: Neelav Kashyap · CC BY-SA 4.0

01The queen’s tank

Siva Singha (r. 1714–1744) made his chief queen Phuleshwari ruler in her own name, Bar Raja, and after her death his queen Ambika held the same title. Ambika had the great tank dug and three temples built on its southern bank in 1734: the Sivadol in the middle, the Vishnudol and the Devidol on either side. The town took its name from the tank, Sivasagar, the ocean of Shiva. The Sivadol rises about 32 metres, its shikhara crowned with a gilded kalash.

02Ahom temple style

The Ahom builders worked in brick, faced with stone in places, and gave the temple a curved Nagara spire set on a hut-shaped hall in the Assamese chala form. The outer walls carry sculpture of Devi forms and Vishnu’s avatars. Shivaratri draws the largest crowds of Upper Assam here. Rang Ghar, the Ahom royal pavilion for watching Bihu games, and the Talatal Ghar palace are a short drive away.

The life of this place

  1. 1734 CEQueen Ambika builds the Sivadol, Vishnudol and Devidol and digs the Sivasagar tank.
Visiting

In Sivasagar town, 360 km east of Guwahati; Simaluguri is the nearest major railway junction.

People

SukaphaaRuler
reigned 1228–1268 CE

Sukaphaa

Founder of the Ahom kingdom of Assam

Nearby

Joysagar Temples (Joydol), SivasagarStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Joysagar 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.

GarhgaonRebuilt
The Mughal era and the resistance

Garhgaon

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.

Charaideo and the Ahom MoidamsStanding
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Charaideo 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.

Lachit Borphukan’s Maidam, HoollongaparStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Lachit 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.