Konark Sun Temple

The Konark Sun Temple is a vast thirteenth-century shrine of Surya on the Odisha coast, about thirty-five kilometres north-east of Puri. King Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, who reigned from 1238 to 1264, built it around 1250 on the site of an older sun temple, whose image was re-consecrated within the new building. Conceived as Surya's colossal chariot, the stone complex carries twenty-four carved wheels nearly four metres across and is drawn by seven galloping horses, the twelve pairs of wheels matching the twelve months of the Hindu calendar. Rising perhaps sixty-nine metres in its prime, it was the summit of Kalinga architecture, its walls covered in divine figures and erotic mithuna reliefs; its name joins the Sanskrit words kona, angle, and arka, the sun.

An inscription of 1384 and the Akbar-era Ain-i-Akbari both describe a complete, flourishing temple, but the great sanctuary tower collapsed in the late 1500s; Kalapahar, a general of the Bengal sultanate, is believed to have sacked Konark around 1568. European sailors called the ruin the Black Pagoda, a Bay of Bengal landmark recorded as early as 1676 beside Puri's White Pagoda. In the last quarter of the 1700s Maratha rulers moved the Aruna pillar from its entrance to the Lion's Gate of the Jagannath temple in Puri, after which the site lay deserted in coastal forest until the East India Company took Odisha in 1803 and began its conservation. The annual Chandrabhaga Mela kept pilgrims coming through the centuries of decay.