Amruteshwar at Ratanwadi: A Temple at the Bottom of a Trekking Route

The attribution to Jhanj is worth setting out, along with what can and cannot be said about it.

What is held:

• Jhanj, also written Jhanjha, was a ruler of the north Konkan Shilahara line in the early tenth century
• Tradition credits him with building twelve Shiva temples, one on the bank of each of twelve rivers in his territory
• Amruteshwar at Ratanwadi is counted among them in local reckoning

What this kind of programme means. A ruler building a set of twelve shrines across a territory is doing something specific, and it is not only devotion.

• It marks the extent of the territory, in a form nobody can dispute or move
• It attaches the ruler's name to water, which in this country is the resource that matters
• It creates a circuit, a set of related sites that people will travel between, which knits a region together
• It is a durable claim. Armies pass, dynasties fall, and stone temples on riverbanks stay where they were put

The Shilaharas were often feudatories rather than sovereigns, and a programme of this kind is exactly what a subordinate ruler with local authority and ambition would undertake. You cannot mint your own coinage or declare independence, but you can build temples on every river in your district.

How certain is any of this. The attribution is traditional and is not, at Ratanwadi, secured by an inscription naming Jhanj at this temple. The dating on stylistic grounds is broadly consistent with the period.

The honest position is that this is an early Shilahara period temple in a region where Jhanj is credited with such a programme, and that the specific attribution is plausible tradition rather than documented fact.

Anyone who visits old temples in Maharashtra will hear the word Hemadpanthi applied to almost all of them, and it is worth knowing what it does and does not mean.

Where the term comes from:

• Hemadri, also called Hemadpant, was a minister at the court of the Yadavas of Devagiri in the thirteenth century
• He was a scholar and administrator, credited with works on dharmashastra and with the introduction of the Modi script for Marathi administration
• Tradition also credits him with a style of temple building, in which dressed stone blocks are interlocked without mortar

How the term is used now. In Maharashtra it has become a general label for any old stone temple, especially one built of large dark basalt blocks with visible joints.

Why that is a problem:

• Hemadri belongs to the thirteenth century. Temples in this style label are routinely three or four hundred years older
• Mortarless dressed stone construction is far older than the thirteenth century and far more widespread than one minister's career
• Attributing a whole regional tradition to a single named administrator flattens several centuries of development into one label

What is probably going on. Hemadri was a real and important figure, associated with a period of substantial building under Yadava authority, and his name became a convenient shorthand.

The same thing happens elsewhere. In north India any old fort gets attributed to the Pandavas, any tunnel is said to lead to a distant fort, and any large tank is credited to a famous king.

At Ratanwadi you will be told the temple is Hemadpanthi. It is more likely to be two or three hundred years older than Hemadri, and it is worth knowing that the label is a category rather than a date.

The stepped stone tank beside the temple is easy to walk past and is a significant part of what is here.

What a pushkarni is:

• A built tank, usually stone lined and stepped on all sides, attached to a temple
• Also called a kalyani, kund or teppakulam depending on region
• It supplies water for ritual use, for bathing before darshan, and for the temple's daily needs

Why temples have them:

• Ritual bathing before entering a temple is standard practice, and a shrine without accessible water is incomplete
• Certain rites require immersion or the drawing of water
• Festival images are sometimes taken to the tank for a water ritual
• In practical terms the temple's own supply mattered, particularly in a hill village

The engineering. Stepped tanks are one of India's most distinctive building types, and they run from the small village kund to enormous structures like Rani ki Vav in Gujarat and the great tanks of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The common logic is that the water level moves seasonally, and steps on every side mean the water is reachable at every level. In a monsoon climate with a long dry season, that is not decoration. It is the only design that works.

At Ratanwadi the tank sits in a village at the top of a catchment in one of the wettest parts of Maharashtra. In the monsoon the whole country here runs with water. By April it does not.

A stone tank that holds through both is a piece of practical engineering that happens to be beautiful, which describes a great deal of Indian religious architecture.

Ratanwadi sits in one of the most walked landscapes in India, and the temple should be understood as part of it.

What is around:

• Ratangad, the fort directly above the village, with its distinctive Nedhe, the natural rock hole near the summit
• Bhandardara, the reservoir formed by the Wilson Dam on the Pravara, also called Arthur Lake
• Kalsubai, at around 1646 metres the highest peak in Maharashtra, with a small Devi shrine at the summit
• Harishchandragad, with the Kedareshwar cave, a linga standing in cold water inside a rock chamber, and the Konkan Kada cliff
• Randha falls and the Pravara valley

Why this landscape is full of shrines. Hill country in India accumulates religious sites for reasons that are partly practical:

• Passes and summits are natural places to mark, and travellers made offerings at them
• Springs and river sources attract shrines everywhere
• Forts required garrisons, and garrisons required temples
• Herding communities moving with the seasons maintained shrines along their routes

The Kalsubai summit shrine is a good example. A Devi temple on the highest point in the state, reached by a climb with ladders bolted to rock, visited by pilgrims and trekkers who are frequently the same people.

What this means for how you visit. Trekking and pilgrimage in the Sahyadris are not separable activities, and they never have been. The routes were pilgrim routes before they were recreational, and the shrines at the top were the reason the paths exist.

A visitor who treats Amruteshwar as a stop on a trek is doing exactly what people have done here for a thousand years.

Getting there

• Ratanwadi, Akole taluka, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, above the Bhandardara reservoir
• Roughly 180 km from Mumbai and about 170 km from Pune, by road
• Igatpuri and Kasara are the nearest railheads on the Central line, with road transfer from there
• Access is by hill road via Bhandardara and Shendi, or seasonally by boat across the reservoir, which local operators run
• The last stretch is a narrow and winding village road

When to go

• October to February for clear weather, comfortable walking and open roads
• The monsoon, June to September, is when the region is at its most spectacular and most crowded, with waterfalls everywhere and the hills green
• Mahashivratri for the temple's own occasion
• Avoid April and May, when it is hot and the country is dry

The temple

• Walk the exterior for the sculpture before going in
• Look at the pushkarni beside it, which most visitors ignore
• The interior is dim. Give your eyes time
• Half an hour is enough unless you are studying it

If you are trekking

• Ratangad is the standard climb from here, and takes a good part of a day up and down
• Go with a local guide if you do not know the route. People get lost on Sahyadri forts every season
• Monsoon trekking here is genuinely dangerous in bad conditions. Rock is slippery, visibility drops without warning, streams rise fast and rescue is slow
• Do not attempt exposed sections, ladders or the Nedhe in heavy rain or wind
• Carry water, food, a torch and a charged phone, and tell someone your plan
• Leeches are common in the monsoon. They are harmless but unpleasant. Carry salt or a repellent

Staying

• Ratanwadi has homestays run by village families, which are the best option and support the village directly
• Bhandardara has resorts and lodges
• Book ahead in the monsoon and on weekends, when the region fills

Etiquette

• This is a working village temple, not a rest stop. Do not eat, smoke or leave litter in the compound
• Take your rubbish out with you. The Sahyadri trekking routes have a serious waste problem and it is entirely visitor generated

A closing thought. The fort above the village is four hundred years younger than the temple below it, and gets a hundred times the attention. If you are coming all this way for the climb, give the building at the bottom half an hour. It has been waiting longer.