Temples of Nagunur

A ruined pillared temple with a flat roof in open ground, beside a tall monolithic pillar crowned by a small pavilion that once held a Garuda figure. · Archaeological Department, H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions (G. Yazdani, Director) (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Nagunur, or Nagnur, is a village about six miles north-east of Karimnagar. The assistant director of the Hyderabad Archaeological Department surveyed it in 1927–28.¹ He judged from the many temple remains there that it had once been a place of some importance.¹

The great Shiva temple

The principal monument is a large Shiva temple.¹ Like the great temple at Hanamkonda it has three shrines.¹ Its plan is star-shaped, in what the report called the Chalukyan style of the Deccan.¹ The entrance is on the north, and each of the other three sides projects to hold an ante-chamber and a shrine with a linga (stone emblem of Shiva).¹ The temple measures 100 feet each way and stands on a platform 4 ft 6 in high.¹

The outer walls are of red stone, apparently from a nearby quarry.¹ The interior walls, beams, ceilings, pillars, door frames and floor are of grey granite.¹ There are no towers over the shrines, only huge blocks of red stone.¹ The writer thought the temple may never have been finished.¹

Pillars and carving

Sixteen carved pillars carry the hall, four of them marking out a central mandapa (pillared hall).¹² The door frames of the ante-chambers and shrines are carved with four-armed door-keepers and women bearing fly-whisks.¹² One of these women carries a child on her hip.¹² The beams over the central pillars carry panels of dancers and drummers.¹²

The report found that the carving of the pillars and the pierced door screens “compare favourably with those in the Uparpalli temple”.² The western shrine had sunk on its faulty foundations, and the department considered the building too damaged for conservation.²

Other remains

In front of the great temple are the remains of two smaller ones, with a broken Nandi.² North-east of it is a ruined hall with four polished black pillars, apparently rebuilt from parts of another temple.² South of it stands a monolithic (one-piece) pillar about thirty-five feet high, crowned by a seated Garuda under a small canopy.² This led the writer to infer a temple of Vishnu there, and two more such pillars stand to the east.²

Another ruined temple stands on rising ground on the way from Karimnagar.²³ Carved slabs and pillars lie about the village and fields.²³

The inscribed pillars

Two inscribed pillars in the compound of the First Taluqdar’s bungalow at Karimnagar were said to have been brought from Nagunur.³ The larger names the Kakatiya king Rudradeva, styled mahamandalesvara (great feudal lord).³ It is dated Saka 1092 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), Vikriti, which the report converted to Wednesday, 13 January 1171.³

Date and builder

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, writing in 1978, describes Nagunur as the capital of Gangadhara, a minister of Rudradeva.⁴⁵ After the wars against Polavasa and Nagunur, the king made Gangadhara governor of the Sabbi country.⁴⁵ According to Sastry, Gangadhara built Shiva temples at Nagunur.⁴⁵ He also built a temple of Prasannakesava with a tank at Anumakonda.⁴⁵

See the Karimnagar inscription of Gangadhara and the Hanamkonda inscription of Gangadhara for Gangadhara’s own records. Sastry lists the Nagunur temples among the best-known temples of the Kakatiya period.⁶

S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, writing in 1964, named different builders for the triple-shrined temple.⁷ In his account a father and son, Mallisetti and Vennisetti, installed in it the gods Harisvara, Ganapesvara and Sakalesvara.⁷ He added that, according to Gangadhara’s Karimnagar inscription, twenty-four forms of Vishnu were carved in the Vishnu temple at Nagunur, though they could no longer be seen.⁷

A slip in the report

The 1927–28 report is not consistent about the king.⁸³ Elsewhere in the same volume it says that the inscription of 1171 names the Kakatiya king “Paratap Rudra”.⁸ Its own detailed account reads the name as Rudradeva.³ The report does not connect the temple with any of the inscriptions.³

Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, 1337 F. (1927–28) (1929), p. 6 (account by the Assistant Director) (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵
Annual Report … 1927–28 (1929), p. 7 and Plates IX–X (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
Annual Report … 1927–28 (1929), p. 8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 102 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 167 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 282 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
S. Gopalakrishna Murthy, The Sculpture of the Kakatiyas (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 34, n.d.; preface dated 1964), p. 28 and fig. 29 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Public domain in India; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Annual Report … 1927–28 (1929), p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²