Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Balarâmpur

by Joseph David Freedone Melik Beglar

BALARÂMPUR.

Four miles to the south-east of Puralya is the village of Balarâmpur; here is a temple of the Baijnâth type, and evidently not very old, but built of the materials of an older temple, as may be seen by examining it carefully, when sculptured stone will be seen used along with plain squared ones in the basement of the temple; the older temple, judging from some very plain mouldings in the stone now built into the more recent one, appears to have been very plain, and of no great size; the present temple is built of cut stone and of bricks, the latter of a variety of sizes, and set in mortar composed of earth and lime, not surkhi and lime; the whole was originally plastered, but is now bare; the cell had a mandapa in front, now no longer existing; the three faces of the temple that have no openings in them are adorned with sculptures of miniature temples, of the tall, straight-lined, ungainly Baijnâth pattern; the roofs of the cell and of the attached antarala are formed of overlapping courses of bricks, in successively diminishing squares; the openings were all spanned by true arches, built partly of bricks rubbed to a wedge form, but not sufficiently so to form true voissoirs; one of these wedges has by mistake been inserted in an arch upside down; hidden away behind the entrance, and let into the inner wall of the sanctum, is the architrave of the original temple, but without any emblem sculptured on it to show to whom it was dedicated; the mahamandapa, judging from still existing corners, was domed over, the dome resting on corbelled pendentives; the mouldings used appear to have been tame and flat, and the carvings, which still exist, are all shallow; the spire also, though like the Baijnâth ones in outline, is quite plain, its surface not being broken up by ornamental bands; the pillars, or rather the pilasters, still standing on the sides of the entrance into the sanctum, are so remarkable for their elegant massiveness, that I have, notwithstanding their recent age, given a drawing of one. The temple, judging from the variety in the sizes of bricks used, dates probably to after Mân Singh's period.