Hindu temples in Varanasi

Varanasi is an ancient city in India famous for housing many Hindu temples.

Quotes

 * Om! Glory be to Ganapati. In Ayodhya lived formerly Sadhesadhu, the speaker of truth, beloved of good men, whose delight consisted in the welfare of all beings. His son was the famous Sadhunidhi, whose son Padmasadhu, of steadfast virtue, on the north side of the entrance to the Visvesvara temple at Kasi built a solid and lofty temple of god Padmesvara, on Wednesday, the twelfth day of the waning moon of the month of Jyaishtha, in the year of Plava: Samvat 1353, on which day this eulogy was written.
 * The Padmesvara inscription of 1353 CE recording the construction of the Padmesvara (Vishnu) temple on the north-side entrance of the Visveshvara temple at Kashi by Padma Sadhu. (Fuhrer 1889: 51). quoted in     Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history. 90ff


 * At that time (1570-71) there was an idol temple, which owing to passage of time had become deserted and become the place of trade of the market people. I purged that place of them and started erecting a madrasa for scholars. It was completed around those few days that Raja (Todarmal) came from a bath (in the river). In that temple there was a pillar 12 gaz (32 feet) high; and there was a date in the Hindu characters inscribed on it stating that it had been set up seven hundred years ago. When Bayizid took it down, he had it cut into two parts, and the two parts again into four portions each. Six parts of the stone were used in the pillars and slabs of the mosque of the madrasa; and two parts were taken by Khwaja (Dost) Muhammad, Bakhshi of the Khan Khanan (Munim Khan) who put them on the doorway of the mosque at Jaunpur.
 * (Describing demolition of temple and use of stones of Varanasi temples in mosque at Jaunpur). Bayizid Bayat, Tazkira-Humayun O Akber. in (Prasad 1990: 150). Pushpa Prasad - Sanskrit Inscriptions of Delhi Sultanate_ 1191-1526-Oxford University Press (1991) also quoted in     Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history. 90ff


 * Kedara was one of the early temples of Kashi mentioned in the Puranic mahatmyas. According to devotees, Kedara was the respected elder of Visveshvara and the oldest Shiva linga in Kashi. It was also locally claimed that Kedara survived the great destruction of Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century. That made the present Kedara temple older than the present Visvanatha temple. Legend has it that when Aurangzeb‘s troops approached the temple they were counselled by a Muslim holy man to retreat. The advice was unheeded, and the troops stormed into the temple. The commander slashed the image of Nandi, kneeling before the doorway to the sanctum. Blood was said to have flowed from its neck, and the assailants backed away in awe and fear. Kedaresvara is presently a large structure on the banks of the Ganges at Kedarghat.
 * Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history. 102.


 * Numerous other shrines, too many to enumerate, were displaced, reduced in size, or simply erased. The Banaras that was reconstructed in the eighteenth century was markedly different from the Banaras destroyed. Sacred geography had changed beyond recognition. (...) So complete was the destruction of Banaras that not a single pre-eighteenth century temple survived.
 * Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history. p 105-124