Submerged Temples of Telkupi Exhibit 3

 

Unknown temple at Telkupi - photographed in 1897. (Maybe attributed to JD Beglar)

Collection: Leiden University Library, Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian and Caribbean Studies

Telkupi and its largely Jain tradition temples(Bhairavasthan) from the Pala period (8th-12th CE) were submerged between 1956 and 1962 as a consequence of the construction of Panchet Dam across the Damodar river in Dhanbad, Jharkhand(then Bihar). 

According to archeologists JD Beglar and Dr Debala Mitra, the area contained, perhaps, “the finest and largest number of temples within a small space that is to be found in the Chutia Nagpur Circle in Bengal.”