Bateswar Group of Temples, Madhya Pradesh

Address

Bateswar Group of Temples, Morena District, near Mitoli Batavali Madhya Pradesh – 476 444

Diety

Shiva, Vishnu

Introduction

The Bateshwar Hindu temples (or Batesara, Bateśvar) are a group of nearly 200 sandstone Hindu temples and their ruins in north Madhya Pradesh in post-Gupta, early Gurjara-Pratihara style of North Indian temple architecture. It is about 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Gwalior and about 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Morena town. The temples are mostly small and spread over about 25 acres (10 ha) site. They are dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti – representing the three major traditions within Hinduism. The site is within the Chambal River valley ravines, on the north-western slope of a hill near Padavali known for its major medieval era Vishnu temple. The Bateshwar temples were built between the 8th and the 10th-century.[1] The site is likely named after the Bhuteshvar Temple, the largest Shiva temple at the site. It is also referred to as Batesvar temples site or Batesara temples site

Puranic Significance

According to Madhya Pradesh Directorate of Archaeology, this group of 200 temples were built during the reign of Gurjara-Pratihara Dynasty. According to Michael Meister, an art historian and a professor specializing in Indian temple architecture, the earliest temples in the Bateshwar group near Gwalior are likely from the 750-800 CE period. The temples were destroyed after the 13th century; it is not clear if this was by an earthquake, or Muslim forces. The site was visited and its ruins reported by Alexander Cunningham in 1882 as a “collection of more than 100 temples large and small to the southeast of Paravali Padavali”, the latter with a “very fine old temple”. Bateshwar was notified by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a protected site in 1920. Limited recovery, standardized temple numbering, ruins isolation with photography, and site conservation effort was initiated during the colonial British era. Several scholars studied the site and included them in their reports. For example, the French archeologist Odette Viennot published a paper in 1968 that included a discussion and photographs of the numbered Batesvar temples.