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KRISHNA DEVA"
MALA DEVI TEMPLE AT GYARASPUR
This temple, picturesquely perched on the slope of a hill, is a towering landmark at Gyaraspur which is a place of considerable archaeological interest, situated 24 miles north-east of the district town of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh Partly rock-cut and partly structural, this temple stands on a large terrace cut out of the hill-side and strengthened by a massive retaining wall
The mature decorative and architectectural motifs combined with the fairly developed iconography of this temple would indicate a late ninth century date for this building which marks the culmination of the Pratihara architectural style of central India
Like the Bajra Math of Gyaraspur, this temple was hitherto supposed to have been originally a Brahmannial temple, later appropriated for Jaina worship It was erroneously believed that the loose Jaina images, of which there is a plethora in this temple, were all planted there, as in the Bajra Math Even if the testimony of the loose Jaina images be discounted, the overwhelming evidence of the built-in images outlined below, leaves no doubt that it was a Jaina temple
Except for a frieze showing Ganesa, Virabhadra, and the Seven Mothers occurring in the interior, there is a complete absence of purely Brahmanical deities There are reasons to believe that Ganesa and the Seven Mothers had lost their exclusive sectarian character in the mediaeval period Jinas are prominently represented on the architrayes of the door ways of the sanctum and the inner ambulatory Yaksi Cakresvari occurs conspicuously on the lalata-bimba of the
* Former Director School of Archaeology, New Delhi
Archacological Survey
of India,
