Thousand Pillar Temple

Famous Temple,

About Thousand Pillar Temple

The Thousand Pillar Temple is a historic Hindu temple located in the town of Hanamakonda, Andhra Pradesh, India. It is dedicated to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and Lord Surya.

History

The Thousand Pillar Temple is one of the very old temples of South India that was built by the kakatiyas. It stands out to be a masterpiece and achieved major heights in terms of architectural skills by the ancient kakathiya vishwakarma sthapathis. It is believed that the Thousand Pillar Temple was built by King Rudra Deva in 1163 AD. The Thousand Pillar Temple is a specimen of the Kakatiyan style of architecture of the 12th century.

It was destroyed by the Tughlaq dynasty during their invasion of South India. It comprises one temple and other building. There are one thousand pillars in the building and the temple, but no pillar obstructs a person in any point of the temple to see the god in the other temple.

The present day engineers have taken out all the pillars from the building. After they lifted all the pillars they encountered a huge mass of sand. It took nearly two weeks for them to take away all the sand. It was wet sand, because of a pipe connection from the nearby water body named Bhadrakali Cheruvu.

Temple architecture

The Thousand Pillar Temple with its ruins lies in the near the Hanamkonda-Warangal highway, about 150 kilometers from Hyderabad city. This temple is star-shaped with several shrines and lingams. There are three shrines inside the temple called the Trikutalayam. The three shrines of the Thousand Pillar Temple are dedicated to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and Lord Surya. The Thousand Pillar Temple is surrounded by a big garden in which many small lingam shrines can be seen. There are 1,000 richly carved pillars and a Nandi bull in the temple. The Nandi bull was carved out of a black basalt monolith that has been highly polished.

The Thousand Pillar Temple is constructed on a platform that is raised to one metre height from the ground level. The temple is provided with a number of pillars which are intricately carved and adorned. Rock cut elephants and perforated screens in the temple are characteristic of the then prevailing dynasty. Many piligramages will be visiting and even film scenes are also picturised here.