Tigawa Temples – The Temple
Complex
The Tigawa Temples has been one
of the Gupta era temples, along with those at Udayagiri, Sanchi, Eran
(Airikina), Nachna, Besnagar, Bhumara, Bhitargaon and others, which together
helped identify characteristic markers of ancient Hindu temples and to
chronologically place Hindu architecture. These were proposed by Cunningham and
refined over time. According to a Cunningham proposal, the pre-6th century
freestanding and structural Hindu temples were likely closer in appearance to
temples made from wood and brick or in caves.
The artists would have been
inclined to reproduce the older architectural elements, style and designs with
new materials of construction such as cut stone, masonry or monolithic
rocks. The key markers for ancient Hindu temples, suggested Cunningham,
include a square sanctum with a flat roof or simpler spire, an elaborately
decorated doorway into the sanctum with parallel vertical bands of carvings,
presence of river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna flanking the bottom or top of the
sanctum's entrance or the main temple, the use of bosses on capitals
similar to those found in Buddhist stupas, and the presence of pillars with
massive square capitals.
According to Cunningham, another
indicator of an ancient Hindu monument is that the temple
is not exactly aligned to the east but displaced by between 5 and 15
degrees from a cardinal direction or aligned in other direction, which may have
happened to match certain luni-solar calendar calculations or because the
standardization of the direction happened a bit later. Kramrisch cautions,
however, that these guidelines are neither rigid nor imply a sequentially
ordered development with abandonment of the style, because a few of these
features such as flat or simple superstructure is found in temples dated
between the 5th and 10th centuries.
The Kankali Devi temple is also
significant for being almost identical in its architecture to a temple found in
Sanchi. The Sanchi shrine too is dated to the early 5th century.
Given the Kankali Devi temple at Tigawa is at a Hindu site while Sanchi shrine
is in a Buddhist site, states George Michell, this demonstrates that there were
close links between Hindu and Buddhist architecture in the 5th century.
As per Cunningham, the Tigawa Temple Complex was a relatively small site consisting
of a mound measuring about 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2) with a length of
about 250 feet (76 m). The entire space was covered with over 36 temples
of different sizes, the smallest one just 16 square feet (1.5 m2) built
from square cut stones. All these small temples are gone, including some
larger standing ones.
However only two temples are standing at present which
are described in detail below.
Kankali Devi Temple:
For
brief details, please refer below link;
Devi Temple / Vishnu Temple:
For brief
details, please refer below link;
Nearby Site:
A Jain temple with a 12.17 feet
(3.71 m) high state of Tirthankara Shanti
Nath is in Bahuriband with
a mostly damaged Kalchuri period inscription dated between
1022-1047 CE.
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