Gadarmal Devi Temple

Gadarmal temple
Gadarmal temple
Religion
Affiliation	Hinduism, Jainism
Deity	Gadarmal devi
Location
Location	Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh
Geographic coordinates	23°55′06″N 78°13′21″E / 23.9182813°N 78.2224866°E
Architecture
Style	Pratihara, Māru-Gurjara
Creator	Pratihara dynasty
Date established	8th to 9th century
Completed	10th century
Temple(s)	1

Gadarmal Devi temple is a Hindu and Jain temple at Badoh village of Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh. Also called Gadarmal Temple of the Mothers, it is one of India's yogini temples. It has 42 niches for yogini statues, unusually arranged in a rectangle; it must originally have been hypaethral.

Description

Gadarmal Devi temple dates back to the 9th century. The architecture of this yogini temple is a fusion of Pratihara and Parmara styles. It is built similar to Teli ka Mandir in Gwalior fort. This temple houses both Hindu and Jain idols.^[1] The temple is made of sandstone with seven small shrines surrounding the main shrine.^[2]

It is a 42-niche yogini temple. 18 broken images of the goddesses that once fitted into grooves in the temple platform are preserved from the waist down. It is composed of a rectangular shrine and a tall and massive Shikhara. Vidya Dehejia writes that as a yogini temple, it must once have been hypaethral, open to the sky.^[3] The temple was supposedly built by shepherds (gadariya), and is therefore called Gadarmal Devi Temple among locals. It consists of one oblong cell with an entrance porch but without sabhamandapa.^{[citation needed]}

The archaeologist Joseph David Beglar photographed a colossal bas-relief sculpture of a mother and child inside the temple in 1871–2. He called it a figure of Maya Devi and the infant Buddha.^[4]