page_title: Tigawa
section_title: Date
hierarchical_section_title: Tigawa / History / Date
caption_attribution_description: English: From the source, The Kankali Temple at Tigowa dates from the 5th Century, Gupta period and represents an early example of structural temple architecture of that time. The typical features of this period are the small square sanctuary with a flat roof and the adjoining porch with columns. The figures carved on the slabs in this view represent the goddess Kali and Vishnu as Varaha rescuing Bhudevi set in niches framed by pilasters with pot and foliage capitals. Over the figure of Vishnu there is a fragment of a panel depicting the myth of churning the milk ocean by the gods and demons.
context_page_description: Tigawa is a village in Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and an archaeological site with a complex of about 36 Hindu temple ruins. Of these, the small but important and ancient Kankali Devi Temple is in good condition, and is usually dated to about 400-425 CE. Unless another building is mentioned, references to "the temple" below refer to this.
  Also referred to as Tigowa or Tigwan, the site is about 4 kilometres north of Bahuriband between Katni and Jabalpur. The Hindu temple ruins were badly damaged during a colonial era railway project when a contractor demolished and excavated the ruins as building material for the railway project.
  Of the monuments, the Kankali Devi Temple is most notable and is a Gupta period temple. It is one of the oldest surviving Hindu temples, illustrating the formative stages of Hindu temple architecture and the essential elements found in the north Indian style through the modern era. It has a sanctum and an open portico supported on four pillars. The sides of the portico were filled in with walls containing panels at a later period.
context_section_description: The Tigawa temple is generally dated to the early 5th-century, though some scholars have dated it to other periods. After comparing it to the hundreds of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monuments he had seen during his tours, Cunningham argued based on stylistic grounds, iconography, and architecture, that the "original [Tigawa] temple undoubtedly belongs to the Gupta period, and cannot, therefore, be later than the fifth century A.D.; but it is more probably as old as the third century".
  In 1957, Mate narrowed the estimate for the Tigawa temple to fourth or fifth century, along with those for Udaigiri and Sanchi. Percy Brown, in 1959, estimated that the Udaigiri is older, adding that the Sanchi and Tigawa temples were probably completed between 400 and 450 CE. Later scholarship has largely placed the Tigawa temple in the early 5th century, or 400-425 CE range.  George Michell calls it "late 5th century".
caption: Relief panels, 1875 photo
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