Monday, July 9, 2012

Temples of Alampur.


Alampur is a town of many ancient and prominent temples and marvellous sculptures as you can see in the photographs attached to this article. It is in Mahbubnagar District of Telangana, on the left bank of River Tungabhadra.
The cardinal temples of Alampur are of Sri Brahmeshwara that is Lord Shiva and of Sri Jogulamba Devi that is Sri Durga Devi / Sri Parvati Devi / Sri Mahakali Devi. Alampur is the fifth of eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas. The place is also referred as Dakshina Kashi and as Navabrahmeshwara Theertha. These cardinal temples and the other temples including Navabrahma temples date back to the 7th century! The architecture of the Temples is not Dravidian, that is South Indian, but entirely North and West Indian. These great temples and the sculpture have stood the test of time except for the temple of Sri Jogulamba Devi which was destroyed by the Bahamani Sultans in the 14th century. However, the idol of Sri Jogulamba Devi and other idols of this temple were protected from destruction and placed in Sri Brahmeshwara temple.
A new temple has come up for Sri Jogulamba Devi at the same place where the old one existed and the protected idol of the Goddess was placed back here in the year 2005. It is a beautiful temple. You can see some distant views of this temple in the 2nd, 3rd and 6th pictures above this article.
Yesterday on Sunday, 8th July, we went on pilgrimage to Alampur and prayed and performed pooja at all the temples there. Alampur is 230 km. from our house in Secunderabad. We travelled 218 Kms. on NH44 which is Bangalore Highway and then at Alampur Crossroads we took a left turn and travelled 12 Kms. to reach Alampur. We started early in the morning at 6:30 AM and returned back to the house in the evening by 6:00 PM.
The picture immediately below this article is of Goddess Sri Jogulamba Devi and the other pictures are of a number of sculptures found in Alampur and now protected by the Archaeological Society of India in a museum adjacent to the temple.

1 comment:

  1. Very useful information. In mid of 1990s. we also visited this temple for some jatar

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