Place · princely-state palace · India

Korea Palace, Baikunthpur

Date

1923-1941

Periods

British Colonial Age, Republic and Living Practice

Function

Authority & administration

Confidence

Established / referenced

Location

23.265, 82.560

Worth knowing

The older garhi the dynasty held before moving down to Baikunthpur still stands at Sonhat, and the Ram Janaki, Premabag and Hanuman temples and the Premakund tank in the town belong to the same period of court building.

Connections (5)

• PatronageGangirani Cave, Natwahi

  Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, ruler of Korea, instituted the Navratri fair at the Gangirani cave in 1936 under the priest Shyam Karan. The cave cult was older; what the palace supplied was the calendar, the patronage and the crowd, which is how a local shrine became a district one.

• PatronageAmritdhara

  The same ruler began the Mahashivratri fair at Amritdhara on the Hasdeo in 1935, a year before the Gangirani fair. Two of the principal religious gatherings of the Korea country were founded by one hand within twelve months, which is as clear a case of state-made pilgrimage as the region offers.

• PatronageBalamgadhi, Mendra

  Balamgadhi carried the Maharaja of Korea's hunting bungalow on the hill that had been an earlier ruler's fort. The dynasty reused the old defensible heights as retreats once it had moved its seat down to Baikunthpur.

• Power passed toKodeyagarh, Chirmi

  The hill fort of Kodeya was the older seat; Baikunthpur became the capital in 1901 and the palace was built there between 1923 and 1941. The district's name descends from the earlier site: Kodeya written in English as Korea.

• Shared sacred geographyChangdevi Temple, Bhagwanpur

  Changdevi was the tutelary goddess of both the Changbhakhar and the Korea houses. A shared kuldevi is the surviving evidence of kinship between two princely states that were administratively separate.

Sources

Commissioner, Surguja Division (division-surguja.cg.gov.in), tourist-destination pages, 2026