Antiquity on the edge

Temples more than a thousand years old dot Morena’s badlands, but not everyone is as intrepid as Arjun Kumar to actually go there and see these endangered examples of bygone brilliance

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Morena is a picture of heavily armed dacoits galloping through the Chambal badlands. Given the area’s history of dacoit infestation, that picture is natural. But it took me just two days there to realise that there another face to the district – a face which comprises priceless historical monuments lying scattered throughout.

The monuments in Morena first caught my eye when I was planning a trip to Gwalior. The ‘Around Gwalior’ section of my guidebook listed places like Mitaoli, Padhavali, Bateshwar and Kakanmath as villages in Morena with monuments, some of which were a millennium old!

Later, having checked out the Gwalior Fort and museums, the Morena villages topped my agenda. An initial problem of finding out the precise location of the villages was solved by a visit to the local post office where Mr. Sharma, a postal employee was able to pinpoint the villages on a map. To top it all, Sharmaji turned out to be a history buff himself and joined in for the trip.

The villages of Mitaoli, Padhavali and Bateshwar lay close to each other, just off the Gwalior – Bhind road and were our objective on the first day. Hitting the road early, it was largely smooth going for us with the traffic being light. We turned off the highway at Malanpur, a village now rapidly transforming into an industrial area and onto the road going towards Rithora Kalan, a town in Morena district.

Though the shortest way to the villages, this road became steadily worse with parts of it resembling bomb craters. Our driver alternated between cursing the department responsible for upkeep of the roads and invoking the gods to keep his prized vehicle intact on this treacherous track. After a drive of over 30 km and series of close shaves with the huge ditches on the road, we finally spotted a solitary hill with the unmistakable shape of the Mitaoli temple at its top.

Parking half-way up the hill, a short climb on rock-cut steps brought us to the top. The view from there was breathtakingly clear for miles around. A single glance at the temple’s outer structure made it obvious that the trip had been worth it. The temple is built in the shape of a huge 200-foot wide chariot wheel with a smaller circular shrine at its center. The overall structure comprises a series of concentric circles with the outer part having rock carvings of goddesses all around at regular intervals.

An amazing point that had emerged about the temple during my pre-visit research on the place was that the building, built sometime during the 8th and 10th centuries, had a design similar to that of the Indian Parliament and could possibly have served as inspiration to Herbert Baker who designed the latter building. Given the sheer obscurity of the temple, I had felt quite skeptical about this point.

That skepticism ended with one look at the inner part of the temple with the likeness between the design of the central inner shrine and that of the Parliament building being apparent at once. The central shrine, with its evenly spaced out, uniformly shaped pillars in a circular pattern could so easily have been the prototype of Baker’s world famous design.

This central shrine lies in the middle of a courtyard and looking onto it is a circle of inward-facing shrines. These shrines are sixty-four in number, each containing a Shivalinga – the symbol of God Shiva. My research had thrown up a name for the temple - Ekateshwara Temple. The ASI workmen at the site gave it another – Shiv Sansad — a reminder of its possible connection with Parliament House!

It was time to leave for neighbouring Padhavali, but as we left we took with us a feeling of serenity that was quite special. Padhavali village is a nondescript place a couple of kms from Mitaoli. Driving through the village, we arrived in front of a fortress-like structure, most unlike a temple. The outer walls of the fortress have rock carvings on gods and images of creatures from Hindu mythology.

Entering the fortress via a flight of steps flanked by two large stone lions, the first structure we saw was the temple, which is visually aligned to the entrance. The temple no longer has an idol and parts of it have collapsed. In the absence of a back wall, it has become a ‘walk-through’ structure. But even with all this damage, it remains glorious.

Carved in rock inside the temple - on its walls and on every inch of its ceiling – are a range of Hindu gods and mythological figures. On one wall is the goddess Kali, on another is the Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh triad and so on. It is obvious that hundreds of years ago, the imagination of some artisan thrived here, leaving behind a riot in stone for posterity to admire.

The temple is the central structure of the fortress, which seems to have been built for the sole purpose of protecting the temple and its riches. There are some rooms, which may have been used by some king during a visit here. In the courtyard behind the temple, priceless rock carvings of deities lay scattered in large number.

An opening from the right of this courtyard leads to another, larger one. Around this courtyard are rooms, which may have housed temple attendants or guards and a water tank to sustain them.

Driving out from Padhavali, we rounded the hill behind the fortress where a helpful villager directed us to Bateshwar, another couple of kms away. The ASI-managed site at Bateshwar was surprisingly different from the temples we had seen so far. It was not a temple – but a temple factory!

Entering through a stone pathway, we were stunned to see the shikharas of temples in various stages of construction, lying all around us. Alongside lay heaps of construction material – ornamental pillars and richly carved stones. There were also two water tanks, which were probably used by the ancient artisans when they were making the temples.

By the look of the place, it appeared that the artisans had just stepped out for a lunch break and would return soon. In reality, they have been gone for a millennium or more, such was the air of ‘work, interrupted’. I wondered what happened that they left so many projects undone in this atelier...

With dusk approaching and another trip planned the next day, we left Bateshwar on the way back to Gwalior.

We hit NH 3 to Morena town the next day. Checking out the beautiful Mughal-era Sandstone Bridge en route at Nurabad, we made it to Morena in just over an hour. Our destination was the village of Sihoniya, about 30 km from Morena town in the direction of Bhind.

Sihoniya had been an important town during the reign of the Kachwahas and in the 11th century, they had built a Shiva temple at Kakanmath near the town. Today, Sihoniya is a sun-baked village known more for its Jain temple with just a dusty track leading to it.

Kakanmath temple lies outside the village. My research had told me that it was 155 ft high, but visually it looked taller. More than its size, the remarkable thing about the awe-inspiring temple is that it looks fragile and if appearances were anything to go by, a gust of wind could blow it away.

Built on a raised platform, its fragile appearance is the result of some parts of the structure having collapsed. At some point in history, it has also been attacked – as a result of which a number of rock carvings on its walls have been defaced.

Similar to the Khajuraho temples in design, Kakanmath is pyramid-like in structure with a pillared corridor leading to the central shrine. On one of the pillars is an inscription dating to a later period. To the right of the temple are the remains of other, smaller shrines including a Shivalingam. The overall effect of the towering structure standing in the middle of fields is stunning and would never cease to startle a chance visitor to Sihoniya.

During the return journey to Gwalior, there was enough time to reflect on the merciless march of history, which causes amazing places like Mitaoli and Kakanmath to be shrouded in obscurity. With the last of the dacoits having gone, Morena will hopefully get its share of the limelight and for the right reasons.

Arjun Kumar