Skip to main content

Gangeswar Temple

“Gangeswar” is a small village located in “Kuranga Sasan” panchayat of Cuttack district. The villagers here believe that it was established by the rulers of Ganga dynasty. The Gangas had built three temples dedicated to Lord Shiva namely “Ganga Mani”, “ Labaneswar” & “Swapneswar” in this village.
However, the most interesting shrine of this temple complex is the ancient & beautiful image of lord Krishna that was discovered during an excavation work of the near by lotus pond.
Lotus pond
The image of Krushna here is locally called as “Ganga Madhava” & a beautiful temple was built in the year 2013 for the safe keeping of the image.
During the excavation work, the flute of the Krishna image got totally broken by the JCB. A stone architect from Ichhapur village near Adaspur was called to repair the shrine. The flute you are seeing that lord Krishna holds took 10 days of continuous labour by the architect to achieve its shape & costs 27,000 rupees to be constructed. A lady named Mrs. Usha Subramaniam (Wife of a Madrasi industrialist) invested all the funds (about 40 Lakh rupees) to construct the new temple of “Ganga Madhava”. A spiritual Guru named Swami Sudhananda Ji supervised the construction of the temple. Only, the outer boundary of the “Ganga Mani temple complex” was built by the funds raised by Government.
The sacred river Prachi flows just adjacent to the temple complex.
Prachi river
Although the temple is the new one but the image of Lord Krushna is very much ancient and kudos to the local villagers and administration who join hands to preserve the image and built a temple for this.
Thanks..
Note: Special thanks to Deepak Ku. Nayak for providing details and photos.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maa Khambesvari

Khambeswari temple, Aska. PC: Debashish Dash https://twitter.com/TheDashDD Goddess Khambhesvari is originally an tribal Goddess worshipped by the tribes of hinterland Odisha. In course of time She was like many other tribal deities given a place in the Hindu pantheon and subsequently she was transformed from a nomadic cult to Shakti cult. Khambhesvari, the Goddess of the Post or Pillar is one of the famous formless autochthonous deities widely worshipped in the hill tracts of Bargarh, Sambalpur, Angul, Dhenkanal, Bolangir, Subarnapur, Boudh, Kalahandi and the Ganjam districts of Odisha. She is worshipped as a manifestation of Shakti in the form of wooden posts or pillars and also through stones. Legends: Khambeswari temple--Aska An interesting legend about the temple in Aska says that once Goddess Khambhesvari appeared in a dream before Khambamuni who lived in the forest and desired that she should be worshipped by the latter. As per the stipulation of Khambamun...

Khalakata Patana

 Khalakatapatna is situated on the left bank of the river Kushabhadra and was a port town of the Ganga dynasty (12th and 14th centuries AD). The excavations at Khalkatapatna (IAR 1984–85: 56–60), took place at the site between 1984–85 and 1994–95, brought to light a brick jelly floor, which might have served as a loading and unloading platform. Chinese Celadon ware, Chinese porcelain with blue floral design on white background and egg-white glazed ware, besides glazed 6 chocolate ware of Arabian origin and dark grey and red slipped ware of indigenous origin pottery were recovered from the excavations. The shapes include bowls, basins, vases and miniature pots and all are wheel turned. The other antiquities include arecanut-shaped beads of terracotta, fragments of bangle of glass and copper, terracotta animal figurines, a miniature copper bowl and one complete and one fragment of Chinese copper coin datable to the14th century AD. The circular copper coin has a square perforation ...

Ekapada----The single footed cult

I travelled a lot. Even don't know how many kms I travelled and how many monuments and archaeological sites I covered. From Baleswar to Brahmapur, from Puri to Angul, from Prachi Valley to Daya Valley and Mahanadi valley, I covered most of them. During my journey, I used to get information from local natives of that particular area and I was surprised by seeing some minor but important cults. Among them Ekapada cult really impressed me. So let us have a look on this Ekapada cult. During my research on this specific cult I got to know about various names like Ekapada, Aja-ekapada etc. Also this form is popular in several countries. Sometimes, they are associated with good fortune and sometimes they are representation of evil. The below figure I got from a research article published by Prachi Virag Sontakke. Also in the same research paper, I got another fig which shows the development of this cult, which is as follows: This is really fascinating to me that ...