DescriptionMohar Gupta Empire era Jain temple, Madhya Pradesh, Pataini Devi.jpg
English: About 14 kilometers north of Ucchahara (now spelled Unchehara), 6 kilometers east of Pithaora (now Pithaurabad) and west of the Buddhist Bharhut site, is a site where a small ancient early Gupta era Hindu temple made of massive stones was discovered by archaeologists. Locally called Pataini Devi temple, it is a curious temple since it includes revered icons of both Jainism and Hinduism. Adinath of Jain tradition with his bull icon is seen here in the temple reliefs, along with goddesses found in both Jain and Hindu (Shakti) tradition are also seen, but it also has images of Shiva, Parvati, Vishnu and others. The design and iconography is distinctly of the Gupta period (c. 5th-century), yet it also has inscriptions from 10th and 11th century.
According to Alexander Cunningham's report (1874, Volume 9, pp. 31–33 and Plate VI, ASI) on the ruins as he discovered, some group had attempted to pull down the temple as evidenced by the wedging out of corner stones on the back walls.
This is a photograph of a personal copy of the plates in an Archaeological Survey of India progress report published in 1920, whose copyrights have expired worldwide. Any rights I have, I donate it to wikimedia under its Creative Commons 4.0 guidelines.
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