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Description: | Photograph of a ruined temple at Wangat in Jammu and Kashmir, taken by John Burke in 1868. This photograph is reproduced in Henry Hardy Cole's Archaeological Survey of India report, 'Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir' (1869), in which he wrote, 'The second Group of Temples, which is situated at Nagbal, just beyond Rajdainbal [the other temple complex nearby] numbers seven buildings, the principal one being 25 feet square, with projections on each face. the situation is a very wild one, and much overgrown, and the buildings themselves are in a most ruinous condition...The whole Group is encircled by the remains of a rectangular wall, of which the foundations can be traced, together with several bases of pillars; and at the north-west corner, is a large tank of stone filled with the coldest and clearest water.' Wangat, some 50 kms north-west of Srinagar was once a halting place on the pilgrim's route to sacred Gangabal lake in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. It has three groups of ruins, within a short distance of each other. Two groups are of temples and the third is of a substantial construction of which only the plinth remains. The northernmost collection of buildings consists of a walled enclosure within which is a main temple with supplementary shrines attached to it and a large cistern carved out of a single boulder. The southern group has a central temple with several shrines around it, placed on a platform which is partly natural and partly built. The temples probably date from the 8th to the 9th century. The location of Wangat is amid steep wooded gorges with the Wangat river foaming through, and the deserted temples have become one with their environment. | License: | http://www.bl.uk/services/copy/permission.html | Rights holder: | British Library | Source: | Collect Britain | Creator: | Burke, John | Identifier: | http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personal... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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