Place · yogini temple · India
Chausath Yogini, Bhedaghat
The Chausath Yogini temple of 10th-century date, cut into a sandstone bluff above the marble gorge of the Narmada at Bhedaghat in Jabalpur district, Madhya Pradesh. The temple is circular — 125 feet in diameter — with 64 niches holding the yogini goddesses in a single Tantric circle set directly over a river landscape, a layout echoed only at Hirapur in Odisha. Most figures are now damaged but the inscriptions on their pedestals identify each yogini with her weapon, mount and lineage. The temple is thought to have inspired the layout of the Indian Parliament House by Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens, who studied the plan in the 1910s. Kalachuri patronage.
- Periods
- Regional Flourishing, Islamic Age and Bhakti Traditions
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Shakta and Narmada traditions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.130, 79.800
Connections (5)
- Shared site withKhajuraho
Bhedaghat and Khajuraho preserve important evidence of the Tantric religious culture of medieval central India. Khajuraho contains a surviving Chausath Yogini temple alongside major Shaiva, Vaishnava and Jain monuments. Bhedaghat similarly preserves a Yogini shrine associated with Shaiva traditions, revealing the religious diversity of the Chandela era and surrounding regions.
- Site adjacencyNarmadā
Bhedaghat’s Chausath Yogini Temple stands dramatically above the Narmada River, linking Tantric sacred architecture with one of India’s most revered rivers. The Narmada has long been associated with pilgrimage, circumambulation and Shaiva traditions. The temple therefore forms part of a much larger sacred landscape shaped by the river’s geography and religious memory.
- Site adjacencyGarha-Katanga / Jabalpur
Bhedaghat lies near Jabalpur, a historic centre of the Narmada region. The city and surrounding landscape contain numerous Shaiva and Shakta sites, while Bhedaghat’s marble rocks and waterfall became important landmarks in central Indian cultural geography. Together they demonstrate how pilgrimage, natural landscapes and temple traditions became closely intertwined around the Narmada.
- Site adjacencyBhedaghat
Above the marble gorge at Bhedaghat stands a tenth-century Chausath Yogini temple — a circular open-air colonnade of cells, built by the Kalachuris, holding carved images of the yoginis of a Tantric circle. There are only a handful of such temples anywhere, all of them circular, all hypaethral, and this one is set directly above one of the most dramatic river landscapes in central India.
- Site withinBhedaghat
The Chausath Yogini circular temple sits within the Bhedaghat gorge of the Narmada in Jabalpur district, Madhya Pradesh, perched on a sandstone bluff directly above the marble canyon. The 10-century circular shrine with 64 yogini niches around the inner wall is one of only four surviving major Chausath Yogini temples in India and architecturally one of the finest Kalachuri works.
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Chausath Yogini Temple, Bhedaghat
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