Place · Ashtavinayak Ganesha temple · India
Siddhivinayak, Ahmednagar
Also known as Ahmednagar, Siddhatek, Siddhivinayak, Siddhivinayak — Siddhatek
The Siddhivinayak Ganesha temple at Siddhatek in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, 100 kilometres from Pune — one of the eight Ashtavinayak Ganesha temples. The temple is the only Ashtavinayak with a trunk-right (dakshinmukhi) Ganesha deity — considered more difficult to propitiate but more effective for devotees. The temple's foundation legend holds that Vishnu, before his battle with the demons Madhu and Kaitabha, worshipped Ganesha here to receive strength — hence the name 'Siddhivinayak' ('granter of accomplishment'). The temple's foundation is 8-century Rashtrakuta; the current structure is 1770 Peshwa Ahilyabai Holkar-era. The temple's unique parikrama path circles the hill the temple sits on (requiring a 5-kilometre walk around the hill). The annual Bhadrapada Ganesha Chaturthi festival each August-September draws over 300,000 pilgrims.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.627, 74.733
Connections (3)
- PatronageAhilyabai Holkar
Ahilyabai Holkar built the sanctum at Siddhaṭek, one shrine in an endowment programme that reached from Rāmeshwaram to Badrīnāth. A Holkar queen paying for a Peshwa-country temple is also a small piece of Maratha politics: the confederacy's houses endowed each other's landscapes. Her endowments ran from Rāmeshwaram to Badrīnāth and were paid for from Indore's revenues by a widow with no formal claim to rule, which is the widest patronage network of the century.
- Companion in the same setMoreshwar, Baramati
Siddhaṭek is the only right-trunked image of the eight, which makes it the hardest to worship correctly and the most auspicious to reach, while Morgāv is where the journey has to begin and end. Between them they hold the circuit's two rules, one ritual and one geographic. A right-turned trunk is held to demand stricter observance from the worshipper, which is why Siddhaṭek's pradakshinā runs five kilometres around the whole hill.
- Site adjacencyMahaganapati, Ahmednagar
Mahaganapati and Siddhivinayak are two of the Ashtavinayak Ganesha shrines of the Pune-Ahmednagar region, sitting as separate temple villages a short drive apart; they are neighbouring stations on the same pilgrim circuit rather than one inside the other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Siddhivinayak temple”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
Open Siddhivinayak, Ahmednagar in the repository →