Jageshwar

Jageshwar — the Shiva temples of the Kumaon valley

The largest of the "Panch Kedar"

Jageshwar is a group of Shiva temples in the Pindar valley of Almora district, Uttarakhand, built on the bank of the Dhauliganga river. It is the largest and most accessible of the Panch Kedar — the five great Shiva shrines of Kumaon, Tungnath, Rudranath, Kedarnath, Mankot and Jageshwar — and its position in the valley has long made it a focal point of Kumaoni Kedar pilgrimage rather than a single sanctuary with one deity.

The complex is conventionally counted as eighty-eight Shiva temples, a figure repeated in the district gazetteer and in regional writing; the count is traditional rather than surveyed, and should be presented as such. The shrines are small and scattered along the river rather than gathered into one enclosure, which is characteristic of Himalayan temple planning, where each temple is placed by a sadhu or a local notable and the group grows organically. The principal temple is associated with Shiva as Baba or by the local epithet for the valley's deity, and there are shrines to other deities within the group. The Dhyāgar and Ardha Dhyāgar melas are the local fairs, and access to the valley was severely disrupted by the floods of 2013, with the approach road and several structures damaged; that is a live part of the site's history and belongs in the record.

Sources and what is still unverified

The Almora gazetteer is the principal local source; state and central archaeology reports would be needed for the temple-by-temple dating, which this record does not have; Majumdar for the general Shaiva material.

For a named guardian, ideally a Kumaoni speaker: which of the eighty-eight temples are individually named and which are recent; the date of each major shrine and its rebuilding; the present state of the 2013 flood damage and the road access; and the local names of the melas and their months.