BHADRA KALI MANDIR: A LOST ASSET OF THE 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

South Asia has seen a number of different ruling kings and rulers who had then contributed in developing this region in every field. Architecture was not behind when comes to the contribution of these rulers. Almost every ruler was a patronage of the religious buildings. Since the two completely different groups have been the citizens of this region, so there were the religious buildings of both the groups. The interesting fact lies in this region of sub-continent is the amalgamation of architectural features of both the groups in their religious buildings. Temple of Bhadra Kali is no exception. In this paper we tried to explore the temple which is no more talked about and very few people know of  its existence. The basic purpose is to explore the architectural features of this temple and write about it so that this building does not remain a hidden gem. Most of the data collected for this article was from the recent owner of this building and on site visiting. Before its present use as a school, it had been a temple with Muslim and Hindu architectural features. The fusion and adaptation of architectural features right from the Samanid period in Central Asia and from Ghaznavid rule to Mughul rule in sub-continent can easily be seen in the temple. Though abandoned and now converted to a school building, it still holds the architectural features that make it an asset of sub-continent architecture, or more specifically Pakistan’s architecture.