Place · temple complex & sacred tank · Pakistan
Katās Rāj
The temple cluster at Katas Raj in Chakwal district, Punjab, Pakistan, built around a sacred tank in the Salt Range said in tradition to have formed from Shiva's tears after Parvati's death. The seven Satgraha Hindu temples around the kund (6th-9th century, Hindu Shahi dynasty) form the second-largest surviving ancient Hindu complex in Pakistan after Hinglaj Mata. The Mahabharata tradition locates the Yaksha Prashna episode here — Yudhishthira's dialogue with the yaksha over the water. Al-Biruni visited and studied Sanskrit at Katas Raj in the 11th century. Katas Raj was opened to Indian Hindu pilgrim visits in 2005 under the Composite Dialogue Process.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Shaiva and Mahabharata tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.723, 72.950
Connections (1)
- In the same set asMalot Temple
Katās Rāj and Malot stand about sixty kilometres apart on the same Salt Range escarpment and belong to the same Hindu Shahi building programme, though Katās Rāj's temples were repaired and added to for far longer and its sacred tank keeps a living pilgrimage. Malot was abandoned early and kept its Kashmiri detail unaltered as a result. The pair shows the two fates available to a Shahi temple: continuous Hindu use into the present at one, and undisturbed tenth-century fabric on a collapsing cliff edge at the other.
On these journeys
Sources
Katas Raj Temples
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