Dashavatara Temple, Deogarh दशावतार

---

The Dashavatara Temple is a mid 5th century (1500 years old) Vishnu Hindu temple situated at Deogarh, Uttar Pradesh in the Betwa River India.It has a simple, one cell square plan and is one of the earliest Hindu stone temples still surviving today. 

---

The Dashavatara temple had numerous plinth panels of about 2.5 feet by 2 feet each, with friezes related to secular life and themes of Hinduism. Some of these reliefs were found during excavations at the site, some recovered nearby and identified by their location, the material of construction and the style. Many are lost.

Built in the Gupta Period, the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh demonstrates the lavish Gupta style architecture.

Archaeologists have inferred that it is the earliest known Panchayatana temple in North India.
The Dashavatara temple is locally known as Sagar marh, which literally means "the temple on the tank", a name it gets from the square water pool cut into the rock in front.Benjamín Preciado-Solís, a professor of Indian History specializing in Hindu and Buddhist iconography, dates it to the 5th-century.

Sheshashayi Vishnu reclining on the serpent-bed of Shesha.

  

  Gajendra Moksha

Nar Narayan Tapasya

---

Deogarh is an ancient site. Numerous inscriptions in different languages and scripts have been found here, as have a series of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist monuments. These suggest that it was once a significant human settlement, likely a location on an imperial trade route that brought people from different linguistic backgrounds to it.

Its antiquarian, archaeological and epigraphical importance are linked to the Gupta period, the Gurjara–Prathiharas during the 9th century (an inscription dated 862 found on the Shantinath temple attests this), the Chandela rulers in the 11th century, Gonds, the Muslim rulers of Delhi, the Marathas and the British eras.

The Jain Temple complex is group of 31 Jain temples located at Deogarh in Lalitpur district, Uttar Pradesh built around 8th to 17th century CE. Now, protected by the Department of Archaeology of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Beautiful Carvings of tirthankaras on Shantinath temple wall

The fort on the hill is dominated by a cluster of Jain temples on its eastern part, the oldest of these dating to the 8th or 9th century. Apart from Jain temples, the wall frescoes of Jain images of "iconographic and the stylistic variety", are special features of the fort. The three ghats (ghat means "flight of stone steps leading to the river"), which provide approach to the Betwa river edge from the fort – the Nahar Ghat, the Rajghat and the ghat with the Siddh ki Ghufa (saints cave) – are also of archeological significance.

---