KULU-MANALI

Manikaran attracts a large number of pilgrims and visitors". It is natural that, when even important deities (devatas) are taken out in procession and people offer their pujas to them the importance of the temples where the deities are located will, somehow, abate.

In Kulu valleys itself there are about twenty well-known temples that have been built exclusively of stone. It has beenconcluded that they mostly originated from 17th century and were meant to propagate the cult of Vishnu. Vishnu worship does not need any animal sacrifice. The Vishnu worship was, more or less, substituted for the earlier Goddess cult and the worship of the local devatas, which needed sacrifice of animals. According to legend in one or two temples human sacrifice also used to be offered. There have been no human sacrifices reported in the last one-century or so.

The other temples and mostly those in the rather inaccessible areas are either entirely of wood or alternate courses of wood and stone. The forest has abundance of good timber for such purposes.

The Kulu temple-architecture needs a brief mention. Dr. Vogel has left a good description of the architecture of some of the temples and there has hardly been any improvement on them". Vogel hesitated to commit himself to a definite or even approximate date of origin of the largest stone temples in Kulu, namely the temples of Visheshar-Mahadev.

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