Place · Solanki temple · India
Modhera Sun Temple
The Solanki-dynasty sun temple at Modhera in Mehsana district, Gujarat, built by King Bhimadev I in 1026 CE. The three-part temple — Surya Kund (stepped tank with 108 miniature shrines), Sabha Mandap (audience hall), and Guda Mandap (sanctum) — is aligned so that the equinox sun's first rays strike the sanctum's Surya image through the eastern doors on the two equinoxes each year. The sanctum image has been lost since Ulugh Khan's 1026 raid on Patan destroyed the temple's active cult. The surviving stone carving is among the finest Solanki work. The temple was restored by the ASI in the 20th century and became a 2010s solar-power village project under Narendra Modi.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Patron dynasty
- Solanki / Chaulukya
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.584, 72.133
Connections (4)
- Contemporary capital withUdayamatī
Modherā's sun temple and Patan's stepwell are both Solanki works of the same two generations, raised under Bhīma I and his queen. One sends a tank down in terraces in front of a shrine, the other sends the shrine itself underground around the water. The same masons' vocabulary does both.
- Contemporary capital withRani ki Vav, Patan
Solanki Gujarat built the sun temple at Modherā about 1026 and the stepwell at Patan about 1063 — two generations, one royal house, one masons' vocabulary. Both organise a building around water: Modherā with a terraced kunda in front of the shrine, Patan by sinking the shrine into the well itself.
- PatronageBhīma I of Gujarat
The Modherā sun temple was built about 1026 under Bhīma I, in the years immediately after Mahmūd of Ghazni sacked Somnāth and Bhīma abandoned his capital for Kanthkot. A dynasty that had just been humiliated answered by building the most exactly aligned temple in Gujarat. The temple has no tower over its sanctum, and the kunda in front of it carries a hundred and eight small shrines on descending terraces of water.
- Architectural modelKonark Sun Temple
Modhera and Konark are the two great Indian sun temples and they are two centuries and two thousand kilometres apart, but both were built with the sanctum aligned so that the equinox sunrise reached the image, and both are ruins with no deity in them. Modhera's stepped tank in front is the feature Konark has no equivalent of; Konark's chariot wheels are the feature Modhera does not attempt.
On these journeys
Sources
Modhera Sun Temple — ASI
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