Category:Two temples at Pandukeshwar

Yoga Dhyan Badri and Vasudeva temples 

9th century Vishnu-tradition temples in Uttarakhand, India
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Instance of	temple
Location	Chamoli district, Garhwal division, Uttarakhand, India
Heritage designation	Monument of National Importance
30° 37′ 59.9″ N, 79° 32′ 58.4″ E
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The Yogabadri and Vasudeva temples near the Alaknanda river in Pandukeshwar are 9th-century Hindu temples from the Vaishnava tradition. They are related to the famed Badrinath temple that is further up in central Himalayas. This site with two temples is the notable source of four early copper plate grants in Sanskrit from the Katyuri dynasty. These grants provide evidence of a thriving Hindu kingdom and religious tradition in central Himalayas from 6th century onwards (post-Gupta era).

The Yogabadari temple, sometimes spelled Yogbadri or Yoga Badri mandir, is unusual and rare example of a cylindrical shikhara built from stone. It has a mandapa with a slanting roof. The artwork in gold and copper, as well the inscriptions found here help date it to early 9th-century. The colonial era visitors speculated that the Yogabadri temple may have been a cylindrical stupa, was therefore either a Tibetan Buddhist temple that was converted into a Hindu temple or its design was influenced by Tibetan ideas for a stupa given the nearby Mana Pass. These theories were largely discarded because hollow stupa temples from this era are unknown, and after no similar Buddhist temples were found on either side of the Tibetan border for hundreds of miles. Detailed studies such as by temple architecture scholar Chanchani suggest that the Yogbadri temple is closest to and was likely inspired by Dravidian temples found in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The cylindrical superstructure stands on a square garbhagriya, thereafter the structure has an alpa-vimana of a style also found in a few pre-10th century south Indian Hindu temples such as the 9th-century Nartamallai temple. The artwork found in this Pandukeshwar temple and some pre-10th century Dravidian temples – such as sejant lion motif – are nearly identical. This temple design is found in Hindu vastu shastra manuscripts for temples. Given the evidence it is likely that pilgrims from south Indian architects and artisans visiting sources of the sacred Hindu rivers such as Ganga and Yamuna shared their ideas and efforts to help build the Yogabadari temple.

The Vasudeva temple, also called the Narayana temple, is to the right of the Yogbadri temple has a curvilinear shikhara of a style found in central and southeastern India. It is likely from late 9th-century. The Narayana temple has a beautiful copper statue of standing Narayana (Vishnu) in a style found in early Bengal and bronze artwork of Tamil Nadu. In front of the Yogabadri temple's mandapa is a mini-phamsana temple dedicated to Ganesha. To the left of the Yogabadri temple is the north-facing Lakshminarayana temple that illustrates yet another form of Hindu temple architecture. It has been restored and rebuilt in the 20th-century; in form, it is closer to the vallabhi form. For a scholarly source on Pandukeshwar temples, see Nachiket Chanchani (2015), Pandukeshwar, Architectural Knowledge, and an Idea of India, Ars Orientalis, Volume 45, pp. 14–42.

This is a category about ASI monument number N-UT-26.