TELKUPI

A village at Raghunathpur P.S., and about 8 kms. north-east of Cheliama, it was earlier visited by Beglar who described this place as ‘containing, perhaps, the finest and largest number of temples within a small space that is to be found in the Chutia Nagpur Circle in Bengal’. He listed over twenty temples and referred to several others and to ‘numerous mounds, both of brick and stone , but more of brick .Bloch visited the place in 1902, when the number of the well-preserved temples had diminished considerably, as he found ten, more or less complete temples. Out those only two stand today and one more is visible half-submerged in the Damodar reservoir at the Panchet Dam. The site was on the south bank of the Damodar –the crossing of the former trade route between Bihar and Orissa -subject to erosion from floods and has now been permanently submerged after the construction of the Panchet Dam. The one that is half under water towards the other side of the lake is the No. 10 of Beglar’s list-a late structure, probably of the time of Man Singh, with an ugly shikhara divided up by horizontal ridges and two mandapas with pyramidal roofs in these sections. Beglar’s No. 10 is one of his first groups of thirteen, all of which must have been submerged. The two temples that are standing now on the very edge of the river seem to belong to Beglar’s second group, although one of them contains a linga, whereas Beglar’s second group contains only Vaishnava temples. Both these temples are almost similar in design to the Banda temples. Between these two temples are the mounds of two more, with carved fragments indicating that they were of the same style as the two others. One has a lingam; the other has a fragment of a doorframe with five carved bends.

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