Category:Tigawa Temple

Tigawa Temple 

an early 5th century Hindu temple in Madhya Pradesh
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Instance of	Hindu temple
Location	Katni district, Jabalpur division, Madhya Pradesh, India
Architectural style	Hindu temple architecture
23° 41′ 26.5″ N, 80° 03′ 59.6″ E
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Tigawa Temple – also referred to as the Kankali Devi mandir of Tigowa – is one of the oldest known stone-cut Hindu temple, dated c. 400-425 CE, in the village of Tigawa between Katni and Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. It is dedicated to Vishnu, and reverentially displays Shiva and Shakti theology. A panel at Tigawa site shows Kankali Devi, one of the Saptamatrikas (Seven mothers), and the temple is therefore called Kankali Devi Temple or Kankali Mandir (not to be confused with Kankali temple in other towns such as in Bhopal). The Tigawa temple is sometimes referred to as the Tigowa temple, Tigawan or Tigaon mandir.

The Tigawa site has a large scatter of Hindu artwork and temple ruins from the 400–500 CE period, along with minor inscriptions with scripts between the 5th and 11th-century. Alexander Cunningham during his survey in the 1870s, traced 36 temple foundations in addition to two temple remains, numerous Hindu artwork pieces and mounds. Thus, the Tigawa temple site was likely a large Gupta-era Hindu temples complex in ancient India. Now a small remote village, Tigawa is likely the ancient Jhanjhangarh city mentioned for its splendor in early Hindu texts. Much of the destruction and damage of Tigawa site occurred in the 19th-century, when a colonial era railway contractor plundered the site as a quarry for material he needed to build railway tracks, breaking the temple ruins and hauling away over 200 cartloads of ready stone pieces. The site's complete destruction was stopped after local villagers protested, according to Cunningham. In the 1970s, another Gupta era temple was discovered by Debala Mitra in Kunda – about 4 kilometers from Tigawa, confirming that Tigawa region was once a large important hub of Hindu religious activity and human settlement for the Parivrājakas and Uchchakalpa dynasties (forest ascetics, artisans-led kingdoms respectively).

The Tigawa temple has a square plan, resembles the Sanchi temple no. 17 but has a much larger platform. The temple has many notable features not found in the then contemporary Buddhist monuments, such as double arches, lotus in the ceiling and Ganga-Yamuna pair with their unique iconography. Many of these features emerge as a standard and architectural elements for innovation in diverse styles in Hindu temples that followed over the next 700 years all over the Indian subcontinent and many regions of Southeast Asia.