Shiv Mandir, Ambarnath
Maharashtra, India
The Shiv Mandir of Ambarnath is a historic 11th-century Hindu temple,
at Ambarnath near Mumbai, in Maharashtra, India. It is also known as the Ambreshwar Shiva Temple, and known locally as Puratana Shivalaya. It is situated on the bank of the Waldhuni river, 2 km away from Ambarnath railway station (East). The temple was built in 1060 CE carved in stone. It was probably built by Shilahara king Chhittaraja, it may also have been rebuilt by his son Mummuni.
Unusually, the sanctuary or garbhagriha is below ground, reached by some 20 steps down from the mandapa, and is open to the sky as the shikhara tower above stops abruptly at a little above the height of the mandapa, and was apparently never completed. It is in bhumija form, and if completed would have been close in form to the Udayesvara Temple also known as Neelkantheshwara temple in Udaipur, Madhya Pradesh, begun in 1059, and the Gondeshwar Temple at Sinnar. It is clear from what was built that the shikhara would have followed these in having four corner bands of gavaksha-honeycomb sweeping uninterrupted up the full height of the tower, while in between each face has rows of five spirelets on individual podia, reducing in size up the tower.
There's also a possibility that the shikhar here represents of Sky as the name suggests Ambarnath which means the Sky. अंबर in sanskrit is sky.
“Shiv Mandir, Ambarnath” enters the record as maharashtra, India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shiv, Mandir and Ambarnath can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shiv Mandir, Ambarnath” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.