Deogarh

Small town in the extreme southern part
of the state of Uttar Pradesh, seventy
miles south of the city Jhansi, in a part of
Uttar Pradesh almost completely
enclosed by the state of Madhya
Pradesh. It is famous as the site for one
of the few surviving temples from the
Gupta dynasty, a fifth-century temple
dedicated to Vishnu as the Dashavatar
(“Ten Incarnations”). The temple itself is
a masonry cube about twenty feet on
each side, topped by a ruined tower that
would have originally been about forty
feet high. In its modest size and square
construction, this temple shows little
resemblance to the Hindu temples of a
later age. However, it prefigures later
architecture in its magnificent carvings:
in the images carved in panels on the
side walls, around the temple’s single
door, and on friezes at the top of the
walls. The portrayal of the divine figures
in these carvings is identical to that
done centuries later, which indicates
that the images used to represent these
deities were already fixed at the time the
temple was built.