A RUINED TEMPLE AND AN ANCIENT MYSTERY

When you travel from Bhuj towards Mata No Madh, the most famous shrine of the patron Goddess of Kutch- Ashapura Mata, you cannot but miss an ancient ruined temple on your left when you reach Manjal a village about 30 km down the highway from Bhuj.

During one of our trips, we finally decided to stop and explore the place. To our surprise, the temple- known as Punvareshwar Mahadev Temple was one of the oldest structures in Kutch and carried along with it an ancient legend. The general area of the temple is known as Paddhargadh or Punvaranogadh and has a few other ruins of fort and temples and is associated with the ancient legend of Jakh Bothera.

The ‘Jakhs’ were said to have been shipwrecked on the Kutch coast and came ashore at place, now known as Jakhau. Variously described as tall and fair-complexioned with an advanced culture, their traditional number is seventy-two with at least one woman. Their origins are obscure.

Later they were revered by people of Kutch as folk dieties and temples are erected in their dedication at a number of places in Kutch. A fair dedicated to them is organised on the second Monday of Bhadrapad (September-October) every year on the foothills. This fair lasting two to three days is attended by thousands of pilgrims.

Front View of the Temple

The temple itself was built around 878 AD by Punvara, son of the chief of Kera, Kutch. Quarreling with his family, Punvara, whose chief characteristic seems to have been cruelty, resolved to found a city and call it after his own name.

When the city was finished, the architect was rewarded by having both his hands chopped off that he might not do work like it for anyone else. It is said that Punvara married a daughter of the king of Sindh. She was devotee of Shiva and carried the deity to Punvaranogadh where she installed it.

Main Deity of the Temple

Soon after, seven devotees of Jakhs renowned for their virtues and miracles settled on a hill near Punvaranogadh. Hearing of their fame, Punvar's childless queen had an underground she after six months prayed them to ask the god to give her a son. But, for her husband's sins, until a sacrifice was offered in the palace, the prayer could not be granted. By the underground passage the holy men entered the palace and were performing their rites when Punvara,hearing that there were strange men in the women’s’ rooms, forced his way in, seized the devotees, and set them with bare feet to tread out corn in a threshing floor bristling with harrow-spikes.

Pitying their sufferings a friendly barber named Babra offered to take the place of one of them. The freed devotee went to the top of Lakhadiya hill nearby and call Jakhs to their aid. Jakhs heard the prayer, and, with an earthquake that shook the hills, appeared with seventy-one brothers and a sister, Sayari or Sairi.

Called on to give up the holy men, Punvara refused and with the help of a magic amulet suffered nothing from the arrows of Jakhs. Then Sayari, taking the form of a mosquito, bit Punvara on the arm so that he drew off his amulet, leaving him vulnerable. A stone falling from the roof broke his head. Jakhs cursed the town and it has since lain desolate.

Punvareshwar temple is a synthesis of two styles. This Shiva temple, which combines elements of the Dravida and Nagara styles, is probably the oldest of its kind in Kutch. Built on a high plinth and sparsely ornamented, the temple itself is relatively small in size. But it has all the essential elements including an enclosed ambulatory around the sanctum. Parts of it appear to have been rebuilt using the original material.

Ruins of Ancient Carvings

In the centre of a platform, 7 feet 9 inches high 160 feet long and 41 wide, stands a temple of Shiva, 50 feet 9 inches long and 22 feet 3 inches wide. In each corner of the platform is a small ruined shrine. Between the ruined entrance and the porch is a hollow for sacrificial fire, agnikund. The temple, facing the west, of blocks of grey and black iron sandstone put together without cement, must have stood about fifty feet high. The porch, 261⁄2 feet long and 18 wide, has 16 pilasters and 8 square, 12 feet high, pillars forming two aisles. In the brackets are figures of men and lions. The dome has fallen, hut an upper floor, with rosettes in the middle of the ceiling and a cornice of creeping plants cut in the stone, is entire. Above the lintel are large figures of musicians. The upper part of the shrine has fallen and been rebuilt. Near the temple are some tombstones apparently of later date, but without any writing.

This temple, though ravaged and badly damaged by frequent earthquakes surely begets a visit when you travel to Kutch next- if not for anything else but for its antiquity and the quaint legend surrounding it.