Sarbamangala of Bardhaman: The Devi Recovered from a Tank

The local account of the temple's founding follows a pattern familiar across India.

As it is told:

• The image was recovered from a tank during excavation, or from the bed of a water body, depending on the version
• It was recognised as a Devi image of considerable age, older than any structure around it
• The Maharaja of Burdwan had it installed and built the temple
• Worship has continued at the site since

What is worth noting about the image itself. Black stone Devi images of this kind are characteristic of the Pala and Sena period sculpture of Bengal and Bihar, which produced a very large body of work in black basalt and chlorite between roughly the eighth and twelfth centuries.

Many such images were subsequently lost, buried, submerged or built over, and a substantial number have been recovered in exactly this way, in tanks, fields and riverbeds, over the last few centuries.

What happens then is the interesting part. An image found in this way is not treated as an artefact. It is treated as a deity who has reappeared, and the appropriate response is installation and worship rather than display.

Sarbamangala is one of many Bengali shrines that exist because someone dug in the right place.

The temple is a working shrine with a full calendar.

• Daily puja with the usual timings, and aarti drawing local devotees
• Offerings of flowers, sindoor, sweets and fruit
• Durga Puja in Ashwin as the town's greatest occasion, kept at the temple with the Maharajas' traditional customs maintained
• Kali Puja on Kartik amavasya
• Jagaddhatri Puja in Kartik
• Annapurna Puja and the Bengali Devi calendar
• Tuesdays and Saturdays drawing steady footfall

Bardhaman's Durga Puja has its own character. The town's community pujas run alongside the temple observance, and the Sarbamangala temple's puja is the anchor around which the town's calendar is arranged.

What is worth understanding about a princely town temple like this one is the layered patronage. It was built by a ruling family, maintained through that family's arrangements, and after the end of the princely order passed into trust and public management, while remaining the town's own shrine.

That sequence, from royal foundation to public institution, is the history of a great many Indian temples in the last century and a half.

Bengal developed a temple architecture unlike anything else in India, and Sarbamangala belongs to it.

The distinctive forms:

• Chala, roofs shaped like the thatched hut roofs of rural Bengal, translated into brick and stone
• Do chala, two sloped, the simplest
• Char chala, four sloped
• Aat chala, eight sloped, a char chala with a smaller one above it
• Ratna, temples topped with towers, counted as ek ratna, pancha ratna, nava ratna and upward, by the number of towers
• Dalan, flat roofed temples with arcaded fronts

What makes this remarkable is the source. Most Indian temple architecture derives from stone traditions and cave forms. Bengal's derives from the bamboo and thatch hut, and the curve of a Bengali temple roof is the curve of a bamboo ridge pole under a thatch load.

That curve, the bangla roof, travelled. It was adopted in Mughal architecture, where it appears in pavilions and gateways, and from there into buildings across north India.

The other Bengali contribution is terracotta. Because the delta has clay and no stone, temples were built of brick and faced with moulded terracotta panels, producing the extraordinary narrative facades at Bishnupur, Kalna, Antpur and elsewhere.

Bardhaman district holds several important examples, and the region rewards a temple circuit.

Bardhaman district holds more than the town, and much of it is worth a visit.

In the town:

• Sarbamangala temple
• 108 Shiva temples at Nawabhat, a striking arrangement built by the Burdwan raj family
• Curzon Gate, the town's landmark, and the buildings of the princely period
• The Golapbag garden and the university

In the district:

• Kalna, with its 108 Shiva temples arranged in two concentric circles, one of the most remarkable temple arrangements in India, along with a group of terracotta temples
• Ambika Kalna and its shrines
• Terracotta temples across the district

Further afield in the region:

• Bishnupur in Bankura, the great terracotta temple town of the Malla rulers
• Antpur in Hooghly, with its terracotta work
• Tarakeswar, the major Shiva shrine of the region
• Nabadwip and Mayapur, the Gaudiya Vaishnava centres

The Kalna arrangement deserves particular mention. The Nava Kailash temple there places 108 small Shiva temples in two concentric rings, with the inner and outer circles arranged so that the lingas of alternating colours appear in a specific pattern from the centre. It is unlike anything else, and it is an hour or so from Bardhaman.

Practical notes.

Getting there

• The temple is in Bardhaman town, West Bengal
• Bardhaman Junction is a major station on the Howrah to Delhi main line, with frequent trains from Kolkata
• Kolkata is roughly 100 km, about two hours by train
• Autos and rickshaws run within the town

When to go

• Durga Puja in Ashwin, the town's greatest occasion
• Kali Puja and Jagaddhatri Puja in Kartik
• Tuesdays and Saturdays for the weekly rhythm
• Winter, which is the comfortable season in Bengal

At the temple

• Offerings are flowers, sindoor, sweets and fruit, sold outside
• Dress modestly and remove footwear at the designated place
• Follow queue arrangements during Durga Puja
• Photography restrictions may apply in the sanctum

Combining the visit

• Nawabhat, for the 108 Shiva temples in the town
• Kalna, about an hour, for the Nava Kailash arrangement and the terracotta temples
• Bishnupur in Bankura, for the great terracotta temples
• Tarakeswar, for the Shiva shrine
• Nabadwip and Mayapur, for the Gaudiya centres

A closing suggestion. Bardhaman is an easy day trip from Kolkata by train, and combining Sarbamangala with the 108 Shiva temples at Nawabhat or the circles at Kalna gives you two very different kinds of Bengali temple in one day, one a working Devi shrine and the other an arrangement of stone that is essentially a diagram.