Place · Ashtavinayak Ganesha temple · India
Varadavinayak, Raigad
Also known as Mahad, Raigad, Varadavinayak, Varadavinayak — Mahad
The Varadavinayak Ganesha temple at Mahad in Raigad district, Maharashtra, 85 kilometres from Pune — one of the eight Ashtavinayak Ganesha temples. The temple is known for the Nandadeep — a perpetual oil lamp (nanda deep) that has burned uninterrupted since 1892 for 130+ years, maintained by the temple priests. The deity Varadavinayak ('boon-granting Ganesha') is a seated east-facing idol. The temple's foundation is traditional 10-century; the deity was found in a nearby lake by a priest named Dhondu Paudkar in 1690 and installed in the current temple structure in 1725 by Subhedar Ramji Mahadev Biwalkar. The annual Bhadrapada Ganesha Chaturthi festival each August-September draws over 200,000 pilgrims. The temple is managed by the Varadavinayak Devasthan Trust. The temple's open courtyard with the perpetual lamp is a distinctive pilgrim attraction.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.872, 73.431
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setBallaleshwar, Raigad
Pāli and Mahāḍ are the two Konkan shrines of the eight, forty kilometres apart below the Sahyādri ghats, and are always done as a pair on the way down from or up to the Deccan plateau. One is solstice-aligned, the other keeps a lamp said to have burned since 1892.
- Site withinRaigad
Varadavinayak, Raigad sits inside Raigad and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Mahad”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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