Update on Bhigwan’s Disappearing Temples

Bhigwan Palasnath Temple 2024 Update

The article I wrote on the Disappearing Temples of Bhigwan attracted quite a lot of interest. Bhigwan is a small town in Maharashtra which is known to attract thousands of migratory birds, especially flamingos. I went for the birdwatching but a surprise waiited for me. I discovered the Palasnath temple, of Palasdeo village, which was submerged by the waters of the Ujani dam. It only surfaces in summer heat when the waters are low. I wrote about it last year and now I have an update.

My friend Sudhir Shingare, whom I met right there in Bhigwan, visited it this year. He said most of the flamingos had left but the water level was so low that the entire temple was visible. He sent me photos of this timeless beauty and was generous enough to let me carry them. So here is a rare look at a scene which is usually invisible – thanks to Sudhir.

When I and my sister visited last year only the spire of the Palasnath temple was visible above the water. In this delightful picture you can see it from the ground up.

Most of it was underwater when I visited. The water touched the bottom of the small niche on the left of the shikhar. The pillared structure on the ground to the left was entirely submerged. This is a side view.

I notice someone has put the sacred flag on top – a lovely gesture.

The above beautiful picture is the entire main temple flanked by another structure to the left. Was that another temple? This photo faces the entrace so you could walk in from here and find yourself in the courtyard and then the empty shrine, the garbha gruha. The Shivling has been reconsecrated in a new village temple. The rocky ground around it shows how far the waters have receeded.

A closer view shows the mandap, the hall in front of the shrine. This is a side view. You can see the stumps of the carved pillars which must have enclosed the parikrama path to circle the shrine. Water is still collected within. This is a rare close up view.

Here is a view of the main entrance looking directly in towards the murti. On the left is a Hanuman like dwarpal figure and a small Nandi with its back to us faces the empty altar. Since all the other murtis have probably been relocated I suppose this pair are the eternal guards at the bottom of the waters, standing strong even after the deity has been removed. Clearly Palasnath’s resident Heron uses both as a summer perch from where to keep watch over the waters..

Palasnath temple is approached by boat. As you come close the first thing you see is a long line of stones just topping the water. That is the outer wall of what must have been a large complex. The walls appear to run right around it and are not just built of solid bricks but also have long broad corridors along their entire length.

This kind of structure is common to large communities or temples which had gurukuls attached. A lot of the old temples were community centers and schools as well. I wonder if that was the case here. There may have been other buildings which did not survive.

Note how long the corridors are. This was no small complex. It must have been the hub of the community for centuries.

Last but not least, here is lovely photo of the stump of a pillar, intricately carved with sages, dancers, musicians and warriors. Temple pillars are usually carved to reflect the four aims of life – dharma, artha, kama and moksha – the pursuit of dharma – knowledge, governance and action, artha – wealth and business, kama – pleasure, sex, family and finally moksha – spiritual understanding or realisation.

Some of the ruins do not look as if they were destroyed by water. I wonder if the temple had been attacked in its lifetime, as so many were. I could not find much history on it but its possible that parts of it were already broken when the water from the dam flooded temples, villages, roads and all.

After some hunting in this journey to an unforgettable sunken temple, I was able to locate the relocated temple on Google Earth which appears much smaller that what the original must have been. It stands on the shore, surrounded by schools, next to the relocated Palasdeo village and probably within sight of the old temple..

This is the second and last article on the sunken temple. At least for now.

One last thing to add –

To end, let me add one thing. So many people commented that these temples should be preserved or relocated or restored. That is easy to say when you don’t realise how vast India really is and that India really is a land of temples. Figures on the web said there are 6,48,907 temples in India. Some say the number goes over 7 lakhs. I wonder if that even covers all the tiny picture perfect shrines found in every field.
In my state Maharashtra alone there are 77,283 temples, exceeded only by Tamil Nadu’s 79,154. My city Mumbai has 4641 temples – its a very large metropolis but a very young one compared to most cities in India. And all these numbers are the ones which remain today after centuries of targeted destruction. How do you preserve them all? Thankfully, somehow, over millenia and centuries, we have done just that, without which I would not be writing this and you would not be reading it.

All the photos are taken by Sudhir Shingare.

Also read – The Disappearing Temples of Bhigwan

The Disappearing Temples of Bhigwan

Bhigwan is a small town right next to the waters of a dam in Maharashtra. It is known for its excellent bidding. Thousands of migratory birds, insofar spectacular flamingos descend each winter and stay till summer. Though we went for birds we ended up finding something else.

The sun has not yet risen but we are in a small boat speeding across the still waters. These are the vast wetlands of Bhigwan, haven to thousands of migratory birds. We are here, binoculars in hand, to look for the year’s last flamingos. It is early April and late in the birding year but the birds are still there.

At that point, I have no idea that this trip is going to be extraordinary.
Several things have converged to make this the perfect moment. We would not ordinarily have been here in April but winter has lingered in the north and some birds have delayed their return. They will be leaving in days as summer begins to heat.

Already afternoons are hot and the waters of the Ujani dam have receded enough to show us what is seen only once in several years and sometimes not for decades. If the birds had not stayed we would not be visiting and if the waters had not receded we would not be honoured with this rare sight.

First stop, as the sky lightens, is the vast flock of flamingos, pink against the dim light, hundreds of birds with their impossibly long necks and graceful strides, bright against the dark green of the shore.

We linger until three other boats get too close and the whole flock takes wing and streaks away in a low irregular line, vanishing into the sky.

Our guide, Rahul asks us, “would you like to see some temples?” We say yes, having passed a small half submerged spire on the way in. I have heard of temples which were submerged when dams were built, such as the Bilaspur ones, but I have not yet seen one.

I am not expecting much but the temple he takes us to is a complete and welcome surprise. We pass a long line of rocks which is the outer wall of the temple complex, now barely visible above the water. And there it is.

An intricate shikhar rises from the waters, beautifully carved and huge. It is not a small village shrine, the square kind you see under a tree in the sugarcane fields – this is a major temple.

This is the Palasnath temple of Lord Shiva which belonged to the Palasdeo village.
The village was relocated and is still there with a tiny population of around 3000. But how do you relocate this massive temple which is over a thousand years old? It was built by the Chalukya kings somewhere between the 9th and 12th century and it was renovated and expanded in the 18th century by Raja Nimbalkar of Phaltan.

We don’t know exactly when it was built but we know when it was submerged. The Ujani dam released its waters in June 1980 flooding villages, temples, roads, fields and everything for miles. The villagers moved their villages and took away the temple murtis, the Shivling and the nandi. I can imagine the solemn procession taking the deity to its new home.

After it disappeared in 1980, another generation grew up before it was seen again. In 2001 an exceptionally hot, dry summer caused the Bhima river to run low and the dam waters to recede. Slowly the entire temple emerged, the shikhar and lower structures, the smaller shrines, the passageways, the inner and outer walls. An exquisite frieze of the Ramayana in stone was revealed, running right around the temple walls. There are photos of it on the internet.

We did not get to see that much. Only the shikhar was above the water – the perch of a long legged, curve necked heron, home to a monitor lizard which peered out cautiously from a crack. Some carvings remain. Coiled snake and deer run down its walls. Peacocks, trishuls, diyas and swatiks adorn its sides. The kalash at the top is long gone but a line of shark heads run in a border circling the dome. This is clearly a fisherman’s temple, given over now to the most expert fisher of all, the Grey Heron.
The temple style, as the internet informed me is Hemadpanthi. The style was created by Hemadripant, the Prime Minister of the Yadavas of Devgiri. It was named Hemadpanthi after him and flourished in Maharashtra, Gujrat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Its an interesting and visually powerful style based on a circle and a square. The main shikhar is a circle in the center. Around it the outer walls are star shaped as if squares wind around the circle. It allows a lot of room for sculptures on the zig zag exterior. I can only marvel at the architectural skills of the ancients.

The shikhar is Bhumija style. Bhumija means of the earth, from which it soars into the sky. The Bhumija style has smaller shikars, kutas, running around the central one. The effect is as if you threw strings of beads from the top and they hung all around in a beautiful curtain. In this temple you can see the stone beads, though the peacocks carved on them have eroded.

The heron spreads its black bordered wings and flies away as we get close. It is a solitary bird used to miles of undisturbed water. Our boat is the only one visible and it has only the three of us, my sister and me and our guide, but even that is too much company for the bird.

When monsoon arrives the heron will no longer have its perch. The waters will swallow Palasdeo and its shark mouth carvings and the bow bearing guards around it. I hope the resident monitor lizard we saw peering down from a crevice is able to escape by then or maybe it can swim.

The heron is winging overhead as we move to the next temple. This Sri Rama temple stands on the edge of the shore. The shikhar is gone and the whole upper part has collapsed. Grass grows from the broken bricks giving it the outline of a shaggy haircut. It stands in a pile of rubble, broken carvings, bits of the roof and walls.

Not all its beauty is lost. Dancers dance eternally on its walls, musicians play their stone silent music and beautiful women stand in lonely welcome. The pile of broken stone around it shows its progressive decay. I do not know how much will be left if I come again. Once it was proud and busy. Now it is home to wildflowers growing from its cracks and an inquisitive pigeon cocking its head at us from the roof.

I found no history about this one. Several other temples were submerged in the waters, including a Tulja Bhavani temple at Wangi, another submerged village. That was too far to visit. It may not be visible because the roof has collapsed but there are pillars below the water with inscriptions. I just hope someone records them before they are eroded beyond salvage.

Wangi also had several temples besides this one. Another village, Pedgaon had a fort with temples and sculptures and imposing structures. I do not know if it too is submerged.

The Pedgaon fort, Dharmaveergad, has an interesting story from the days of Chhatrapati Shivaji when the Marathas and Mughals were at war. The Marathas received news that the commander of the fort, Bahadur Khan had acquired 200 fine horses and collected substantial wealth. They planned a raid with 2000 men. Bahadur Khan heard of the raid and left the main gate open. When the Maratha army entered he attacked. The Marathas fled and his army followed but Bahadur Khan did not realise that this was part of the plan. Shivaji had a force of 7000 men waiting who entered the fort, collected the horses and wealth and disappeared before Bahadur Khan and his army returned, having achieved nothing. What a shock it must have been to find both his wealth and the Marathas gone.

We pass the last temple on the way back, quite a distance away from the other two. Which makes me aware that once there were villages beneath us, fields and roads and clusters of houses which you might still discover if you took to scuba diving down those long forgotten streets at the bottom of the lake. The villagers still remember the names of the lost villages. I would have liked to look at a map of the sunken towns but did not find one.

This temple is smaller, perhaps a gram devata at the village edge. It is a Maruti temple.

Possibly a graceful old tree stood close to shade the small temple. Now it is alone in the waters. Cormorants and water birds use it as a convenient perch while looking for breakfast.

The temples still stand because they were built by people who planned structures to last. They did not use mortar or binding which would have caused the temples to collapse into untidy piles of stone as the bindings dissolved. They built using interlocking blocks, fitting one into another. It sounds like a time and labour intensive method but they were planning for thousands of years ahead.

Though they did not know it, they were building for us, their ancestors, who might take a boat ride one summer dawn and find the dreaming spires under the swift shadows of bird’s wings, and send out a silent thank you across the waves that such timeless beauty still remains, even in this crazy, frantic, hectic world.

Article first published on Indica Today, 15 May 2023 Photo credits – Rohini Gupta

Link to the original article HERE

Coming soon – updates on Bhigwan