Daily Archives: October 19, 2018

JAGESWAR (ALMORA)

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  • Country: India

  • State – Uttrakhand (kumoun region)

  • District – Almora

  • Nearest  International Airport – IGI Delhi

  • Nearest Railway station – Kathgodam (Haldwani)

  • Distance from the nearest railway station-  123 km (4 Hrs. Trip by Taxi or Bus)

  • Height from the Sea Level – 6,135 Ft. (1,870 m)

  • Jageshwar Temples also referred to as Jageswar Temples or Jageshwar valley temples, are a group of over 100 Hindu temples dated between 7th and 12th centuries near Almora, in the Himalayan Indian state of Uttarakhand.

  • consist of over 200 temples cluster.

  • They predominantly illustrate North Indian Nagara style of architecture with a few exceptions that show South and Central Indian style designs, many are dedicated to god Shiva, while others in the immediate vicinity are dedicated to god Vishnu, Shakti goddesses and Surya traditions of Hinduism.[1][2]

  • Jageshwar is a Hindu pilgrimage town and one of the Dhams (pilgrimage region) in the Shaivism tradition. The site is protected under Indian laws and managed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It includes Dandeshwar Temple, Chandi-ka-Temple, Jageshwar Temple, Kuber Temple, Mritunjaya Temple, Nanda Devi or Nau Durga, Nava-grah temple, a Pyramidal shrine, and Surya Temple. The site celebrates the Jageshwar Monsoon Festival during the Hindu calendar month of Shravan (overlaps with July-August) and the annual Maha Shivratri Mela (Shivratri festival), which takes place in early spring.

  • this site is full of natural beauties like a deep forest of deodar trees which are almost 150 years old.

  • The View of Sunset will make you feel Amazed. 

  • Your heart will definitely be filled with strange happiness and calmness that never had been felt.

  • Jageshwar is located 36 kilometers (22 mi) northeast of Almora

  • The site is about 3.5 kilometers (2.2 mi) long along the Jataganga rivulet, which is a narrow forested valley of oaks, deodars, rhododendrons, and pines.[5] Around the valley is human habitation which provides services to the pilgrims and travelers visiting these temples or passing through to other sacred sites in the Uttarkhand region. The resident villages are Mokshadham, Dandeshwar, Jageswar, and Koteshwar.[6]

  • The origins of the Jageshwar temples site are unclear. Its remote location has limited its studies and scholarly attention. The site shows evidence of different architectural styles and building periods for both temples and stone steles, which range from the 7th to the 12th century, and then in modern times.[7] Estimates for the same temple or stele vary widely, sometimes 1,400 years. According to the ASI, some belong to the post-Gupta or the second half of the 1st millennium while others belong to the 2nd millennium. Some colonial-era guesses attribute them to the Katyuri or Chand hill dynasties but there is no textual or epigraphical evidence to support or refute these proposals.[7] Another prevailing theory is that Adi Shankara built some of these temples, but once again there is no textual or epigraphical evidence to support this claim. Instead, the architectural features and style of some of these Hindu temples are from the early 7th century, which is about 50 to 100 years before Adi Shankara lived (c. 788-820 CE).[8]

  • The valley has two major clusters of Hindu temples and a number of roadside shrines. Of these some 151 temples have been numbered by ASI as protected pre-12th century monuments. The two largest groups are locally called as the Dandeshwar group temples (Dandeshwar samuh mandir, 15 temples) and the Jageshwar group temples (Jageshwar same mandir, 120 temples). Of these, temple numbers 37, 76 and 146 are the largest, all dated to the late centuries of the 1st millennium. In the historic text, Jageshwar is also referred to as Yageshvara.

  • Jageshwar was once the center of Lakulish Shaivism, likely by monks and migrants who left the plains of the Indian subcontinent from places such as Gujarat and settled in the high mountains. The resemblance between the Kumaoni language and Gujarati language probably hints at the fact that followers of Lakulish settled at Jageshwar. The temples site overtime was positioned as and grew as sacred geography in the form of northern (Uttara) Kashi (Varanasi).[10]