Saturday, February 2, 2019

Incomplete Bhojeshwar Temple - a treasure trove of insights into ancient temple construction

India is without any doubt a country filled with temples. Every temple that i have been to has a large number of religious visitors and very few "cultural" only visitors. Fortunately, i visited a very interesting temple recently. This temple is incomplete and has been for almost a thousand years and tends to attract many non-religious visitors as it does not have traditional pooja (worship).

It is unclear why the temple construction was abandoned. However, anecdotal stories about why the construction was stopped range from war, natural calamities, superstition and even divine intervention. Nonetheless, the fact that temple construction is frozen in time has made it possible for experts to study temple construction methods of the 11th century. This is similar to freezing natural phenomenon in time to study them. Study of genomes to understand evolutionary processes seems very similar to studying an incomplete temple to understand construction methods.