CHAMBA

Mrikula Devi temple at Lahul :-The temple of Kali, commonly called Mrikula Devi from the name of the village where it is found, is of unknown age. Margul or Marul, ancient Mrikula, is a village in Chamba-Lahul, at the junction of the Miyar Nala with the Chander Bhaga. About 1695 it was renamed Udaipur, when Raja Udai Singh (1690 - 1720) raised it to the status of a district centre in the part of Lahul which his father Chatar (or Satru) Singh (1664-1690) had annexed to the Chamba state. The place is not of much interest, except for its unique temple of Kali, called Mrikula Devi after the name of the village.

The popular tradition that the same artisan worked the Mrikula temple and the temple of Hidimba at Manali in Kulu deserves no credit. The Manali temple with its profuse but crude wood-carvings was built by order of Bahadur Singh of Kulu in A.D. 1559. The temple of Mrikula Devi must be centuries older. It evidently belongs to some intermediate period, perhaps the tenth or eleventh century. The wood- carving of these hills exhibits, perhaps more than any other branch of Indian art, a constant deterioration. Modern work is indeed so clumsy as to appear primitive. The Mrikula temple, like that of Lakshana Devi, has an anteroom or mandapa in front of the shrine proper, and a solid wall enclosing both. Like the shrines already discussed, it does not look impressive from outside, as its exterior shell, exposed to all the inclemencies of a climate hardly better than that of the Tibetan highlands, had to be renewed time and again. It stands on a mountain slope, the usual structure of rubble filled in between wooden refters (thirty-three by twenty-three feet inside; twelve feet high), on the south side resting on a platform (six feet seven inches high), on the north side almost dug into the hill, as the interval between the wall and the hill has been filled up with stones and earth probably in order to reduce the danger from snow pressure and avalanches.

[ Back ] [ Up ] [ Next ]