Bhubaneswar: The Vishnu Temple and the Jain Temple in Odisha’s Koraput district have been demolished by the State Archaeology Department in the name of renovation, heritage expert Anil Dhir alleged.
Both the temples located 45 kilometres from the District Headquarters, were lying in a deserted and ruined condition in the middle of agricultural fields, he alleged.
Dhir said the 6th Century C.E. Vishnu temple belonged to the period when the Nala Dynasty held sway in the region, and was probably built by the Nalas of Pushkari. It was a small temple of the early Kalingan order with a Rekha Vimana.
He said a team from Intach, Odisha Chapter had gone to the February 26 last and observed that the old temple had been totally dismantled and its stone blocks scattered in the field.
Shockingly, the entire ancient structure had been dismantled, and the old stone blocks had been chiselled and polished to make a new structure, Dhir said, adding that all the carvings and embellishments of the earlier temple had been totally destroyed.
He further said a half-finished square structure that bore no resemblance to the earlier temple was seen. The ancient Chaturbhuja Vishnu image had been removed from the old temple and kept in the open.
Except for the two carved door jambs, the entire decorative motifs have been destroyed. The lintel section of the doorjamb with a prominent Gajalaxmi motif is lying abandoned at the site. Many of the old stone blocks have been taken away by the villagers, Dhir said.
Similarly, the Jain Temple located just three km away from the Vishnu temple too has a half-finished renovation, Dhir said.
This temple too is an early Kalingan order temple which can be dated to the 6th- 7th Century C.E. The Jain Tirthankar images have been worshipped as Narayan Mahaprabhu by the villagers for centuries.
The heritage expert and Odisha Intach coordinator said the original structure of the Jain temple has been dismantled and the stone blocks are lying in disarray.
The newer structure has been half completed with the images lying in the open. The temple premises had a single un-deciphered stone inscription panel which is missing now.
The manner in which both these early-era temples have been destroyed in the name of restoration has dismayed the team.
According to Deepak Nayak, a team member, the conservation work has been done in an unscientific manner by semi-unskilled persons.
No archaeological expert had visited the place. The dismantling of two of the earliest stone temples is a cultural genocide, he alleged and lamented on these forgotten structures, which had survived for more than 14 centuries only to be destroyed in the name of preserving them.
Anil Dhir said that no archaeologist or heritage expert would demolish the old structures and make a new one at the place.
Both the old temples, he said, were in a restorable state and could have been conserved in their original form. In fact, the old temples should have been left intact and the newer structures built alongside where the images could have been secured.
Intach’s Koraput Chapter is soon going to launch a project to document the entire heritage of the district. The rich Jain monuments and early period heritage structures have not been properly listed to date, Ajit Patro, another team member said.
UNI
