Category:Bala Brahma Temple, Alampur

The Bala Brahma temple is one of nine Chalukya era, Nagara-style temples found in Alampur village, Telangana. It is one of the oldest, completed about 650 CE, one or two decades after Kumara Brahma temple.

The temple is in active use, and access to its different sides is difficult because the northwest side of it was appropriated by 15th to 17th-century Islamic monuments (Dargah, fort and such).

Inside the temple, there is mixture of 7th-century structure, original reliefs and statues in directional niches as recommended in early Hindu Sanskrit texts on temple architecture, later structural additions, recovered ruins that have been reinstalled in different corners, modern plaster, new paint, lime coat, prayer materials, a new floor, and very old statues.

The temple is built with the square plan, has a mandapa, sanctum with a Nagara-style four tala shikara (spire). The sukhanasi features a Nataraja is structurally supported by the antarala. The niches with dikpalas found in this temple are an innovation over the design found in the older Kumara Brahma. The temple includes single and triple stone mesh windows that lets light into the temple. The base mouldings remind of the type found in Gupta era early temples such as the Nachna temple. The original statues also offer a window into the regional Indian culture, such as of Durga's hairdo, her wearing a dhoti waist down in a style still common in Telangana and Andhra region, her jewelry, and items of iconography in her four hands as she stands on two lions in one of the niches of this temple.

The shikara and other innovations likely inspired and were further innovated upon by the architects and artisans in later Navabrahma temples in Alampur, as well those found in Aihole, Karnataka.