Bateshwar in the Chambal Valley Has More Than 200 Small Sandstone Shrines Laid Without Mortar, and the ASI Has Reassembled More Than 60 of Them From Their Own Fallen Stones

On a terraced hillside in the Chambal ravines of Morena district, about 35 km north of Gwalior, stand more than 200 small sandstone shrines at Bateshwar, and India’s UNESCO submission says they were built “without mortar”, each block dressed to fit its neighbour. A team of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) led by K. K. Muhammed reassembled dozens of them from fallen pieces after 2004. The submission counts more than 60.

Bateshwar, Padavali and Kakanmath (spelled Kakarmath in India’s submission) were added to India’s Tentative List for World Heritage as one serial entry, “Group of Temples of the Chambal Valley”, on 29 September 2026. News On AIR reported the addition that day. India’s submission is dated 8 July 2026 and claims two UNESCO criteria, (ii) for the exchange and development of architectural ideas and (iv) for an outstanding example of a building type.

Two hundred shrines on one hillside

The submission describes Bateshwar as “one of the most extensive groups of early medieval temples in North India.” It says the shrines, in the northern Nagara style, run from simple flat-roofed cells to temples with a curved tower (shikhara) above the sanctum, mostly of the Gurjara-Pratihara period, 8th to 10th century CE, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti. Madhya Pradesh Tourism and the Chambal division’s tourism page say the complex covers about 25 acres.

Counting the temples has a long record. Alexander Cunningham of the ASI visited in 1882 to 1883, when, Puratattva notes, only a few were standing. He wrote of “more than one hundred temples of various sizes, but mostly small,” in a valley south-west of the village of Paravali, as he spelled Padavali. Bhuteswara, the largest temple standing then, still gives the complex its name. Two rows of small shrines ran north of it “forming a sort of street,” and one of a row of nine small shrines to the north-west carried a short inscription dated Samvat 1107, or 1050 CE. The submission, Muhammed and the ASI estimate quoted by Puratattva all give 200 or more.

Dates are argued across a wide range. India’s submission says 8th to 10th century for most of Bateshwar. Puratattva reports that the scholar R. D. Trivedi assigns the large Vishnu temple to the late 8th century and the complex to the late 8th and 9th centuries, on style. Muhammed writes of temples built between the 9th and 11th centuries, and says the later Vishnu temple he is rebuilding dates to about the 11th, in a style close to Khajuraho. No source opened here gives a single agreed date for the group.

The jigsaw puzzle

When the ASI began work, Muhammed writes in Outlook Traveller, the site was in ruins, with thousands of pillars, beams, spires and crowning stones lying across several acres. He presumed an earthquake had brought the temple town down. He writes that nobody had dared to loot the pieces, perhaps out of fear of the dacoit (armed bandit) gangs who held the area. By Muhammed’s account he met Nirbhay Singh Gujjar, a dacoit with over 250 cases against him, at the site in 2004. Gujjar was shot dead in 2005, Puratattva reports.

Each temple was to be rebuilt only from its own fragments. Muhammed says the team started with the entrance gate and the four temples beside it, and used standing temples as models and the temple-building treatises Manasara, Mayamata and Samarangana Sutradhara as guides. The last of these is the text attributed to King Bhoja, the builder’s manual behind the engraved plans at Bhojpur. “It was like a jigsaw puzzle on a gigantic scale,” he told Indian Narrative in 2023.

Illegal mining near the site later threatened the restored temples, Muhammed writes, and police moved against it. After his transfer the work slowed, he says, until the Infosys Foundation stepped in with support he credits to Sudha Murty. In the 2023 interview he said the team was rebuilding one of the largest Vishnu temples in the complex.

How many temples have been put back depends on who is counting:

• India’s UNESCO submission: “over 60 temples have been reassembled.”
• Muhammed in Outlook Traveller (2025): 70 temples in four years.
• Muhammed in an interview of 2023: 80 temples in five years, from 2005 to 2010, with about 100 still to rebuild and another Rs 10 to 15 crore needed.
• Puratattva (2016): about 200 temples by an ASI estimate, with 80 still awaiting restoration.

These figures do not reconcile, and this article uses “more than 60” because the official submission does. Muhammed has also compared the complex with Aihole, which he counts at 108 temples. The Bagalkot district administration counts about 125.

The sixteen pillars of Padavali

Padavali lies about a kilometre from the Bateshwar valley. India’s submission ties its temple to the Kachchhapaghata rulers of the 10th century. The sanctum has gone, while the open hall and entrance porch survive, “richly carved” on pillars, beams and ceiling panels.

Cunningham measured the hall at 25 feet square, its roof held on sixteen pillars 19 inches square, with the beams “very richly sculptured.” On the east beam the main figure is Surya, the sun god, and on the west it is Kali. The south beam carries Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, and the north beam Hara-Gauri, Shiva with Parvati. He took the temple to be Shiva’s. In his day an upper storey with a domed roof had been built over the hall and the whole made into a small fort, which he said the Rana of Dholpur did early in the 19th century. Dating of the fortification differs, since Madhya Pradesh Tourism and Puratattva place it in the 18th century.

The Gwalior Archaeological Department removed the later additions in 1926 and finished conservation in 1931, Puratattva reports, and the site quotes the art historian Krishna Deva as calling the temple one of the finest of the 10th century in central India. One lintel shows episodes from Krishna’s childhood, among them the birth, the lifting of Mount Govardhana and the butter-churning. Many sculptures remain on site, the submission says, and others were moved to museums in Gwalior.

Kakanmath, 100 feet with nothing between the blocks

The third site is at Sihoniya, about 30 km from Morena, according to Madhya Pradesh Tourism. The submission dates the Kakarmath temple to the early 11th century and gives it to the Kachchhapaghata ruler Kirtiraj. Standing on a high platform, it is built in dry masonry of precisely interlocked sandstone blocks, with a long shikhara and a plan of sanctum, vestibule and pillared hall. The tower is estimated at about 100 feet in the submission and about 30 metres by Madhya Pradesh Tourism, which is close to the same height.

The tower has survived to its full height, Puratattva says, but its outer facing is gone, leaving a bare skeleton under the crowning stone. Seven carved bands frame the sanctum doorway, and sixteen pillars carry the hall. The Morena district page calls it one of the only surviving royal temples of the Kachchhapaghata dynasty.

The evidence for the builder is an inscription in the Sas-Bahu temple at Gwalior. It records Kirtiraja building, Puratattva reports, a grand Shiva temple at Simhapaniya, the old name of Sihoniya, and that M. B. Garde of the Gwalior State archaeology department made the identification in a survey of 1925 to 1926. Around 1015 to 1035 CE is the dating Madhya Pradesh Tourism gives, and the same page says the temple was raised at the request of a queen, Kakanwati, and records a local belief that spirits built it in one night. The Sas-Bahu inscription says nothing about the queen, Puratattva notes. Garde’s conservation plan, Puratattva reports, was carried out only in part because of limited funds, and it included clearing jungle, resetting steps and propping broken lintels. Stone lions that guarded the porch steps are now in the Gujari Mahal museum in Gwalior.

Where the three sit in temple history

India’s submission treats the group as stages in one tradition. Bateshwar is the early, experimental phase with many shrine types on a single hillside. Padavali is where carving and architecture merge, and Kakarmath is the large late result. It compares them with Khajuraho, saying the Chambal temples show forms that came before the fully developed Chandella temples, which are covered in our guide to Khajuraho.

The submission notes a fourth site nearby, the circular Chausath Yogini temple at Mitaoli, and keeps it out of the group because it belongs to a separate Yogini tradition. Organiser reports that it was added to the Tentative List in 2025. With the Chambal entry, Organiser counts Madhya Pradesh at 19 of India’s 78 Tentative List sites.

Business Standard notes that a site must be recognised on the Tentative List before it can be considered for World Heritage status. As of 2 November 2026 the three sites remain at that first stage.