Place · unfinished Shiva temple · India
Bhojeshwar Mahādev, Bhojpur
The uncompleted Paramara-dynasty Shiva temple at Bhojpur in Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh, 28 kilometres from Bhopal — begun by King Bhoja Paramara (ruled 1010-1055) and abandoned mid-construction. The 2.3-metre-high Shiva linga at the sanctum centre is one of the largest in India, carved from a single rock. The temple's platform preserves the mason's full-size working drawings — plans, elevations, column profiles, dome sections — scored into the rock, the only such surviving medieval Indian architectural blueprints. The uncompleted dome has stones left in position on earth ramps, giving a working view of how medieval Nagara dome construction worked. Abandonment is undated — possibly after Bhoja's death in 1055 or the Ghaznavid raids of the 11th century.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.100, 77.600
Connections (3)
- Architectural modelNāgara temple architecture
Bhojpur carries the other half of the evidence: the temple was never finished, so the earthen ramp that raised its stones is still there and the architects' drawings are still incised on the surrounding rock. It is the rarest thing in Indian architecture, a nāgara building caught in the act of construction.
- Contemporary capital withKhajuraho
Paramāra Bhojpur and Chandela Khajurāho are central India's two great eleventh-century temple projects, three hundred kilometres apart and built within a generation. Khajurāho was finished and abandoned; Bhojpur was abandoned unfinished, leaving its construction ramp and mason's drawings in place. Between them they show the work at both ends. Bhojpur's unfinished liṅga is over two metres high and cut from a single block, which is what the ramp was built to raise the roof over.
- PatronageRaja Bhoja of Dhar
Bhoja's Bhojpur temple was never finished, so its earthen construction ramp is still in place and the architects' working drawings are still incised on the surrounding rock — the rarest thing in Indian architecture, a building caught mid-construction. He is also credited with the Samarāngana Sūtradhāra, a treatise on architecture and mechanical devices, which makes the unfinished temple a text and a building by the same hand.
On these journeys
Sources
List of World Heritage Sites in India — Wikipedia
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