Temple of Lakshmi Narayana and other Hindu temples in India

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

Any tourist who travels to India cannot but visit such places of worship as the temple of Lakshmi Narayana. Delhi, the capital of fairy land, attracts millions of visitors every year. The reason for this, of course, is in the unique culture of India, which dates back more than one thousand years. The majestic temples of the leading religion in the country - Hinduism, unusual monks and pilgrims - the atmosphere of any local city makes a stranger feel like in a real fairy tale. What are Indian pilgrims and monks worth! We will tell about this wonderful monument later in the publication.

Modern Delhi or ancient India?

The capital of India, Delhi, is no exception. The sights of Delhi, in fact, are very diverse - after all, this is the main city of the country, which has a developed space program and is famous for its programmers. Nevertheless, Western people (and Russia and the CIS countries for the local population are no different from Europeans, at least outwardly) do not come to India in order to delve into the problems of our time. We are all attracted to living monumentsantiquity - and above all, the Hindu temples of India.

Imaginary antiquity

Interestingly, most of the most sought-after temple complexes, which are valuable both for Hindus and for an ordinary traveler who came to the country to gawk at the peculiarities of culture and traditions, are not so old. This is exactly what distinguishes a city like New Delhi. India is a young country, despite its thousand-year history. Thanks to the image, almost everything that we see here seems to be covered with a veil of antiquity, but often this is far from the case, even when the conversation refers to the places of worship in the city of Delhi. Attractions, among which are the most famous temples in the country, Lakshmi Narayana, Radha-Parthasaratha and the largest temple complex in the country, Akshardham, were built quite recently - at the end of the twentieth, or even in the twenty-first century! What makes India really different is that it carefully preserves all the traditions of thousands of years of antiquity, from Vedic times to the Middle Ages, keeping them alive with fire. This attitude is what makes iconic architecture feel that way.

Laxmi Narayana Temple

This is probably the most popular temple for tourists in the country. It was created thanks to two well-known Indian patrons of the interwar period, father and son Jugar Kishore Birla and Baldeo Birla. Therefore, in fact, often the temple of Lakshmi Narayana is called by the name of these benefactors - the temple of Birla. Lashkmi and Narayana, the deities to whom the cult is dedicatedbuilding, is a married couple, in which the first figure, the goddess of he alth, is more famous. Every year, thousands of Hindus pray in the temple, asking Lakshmi for well-being for their family and loved ones.

The construction of the religious building was carried out in the thirties of the last century, and the well-known Mahatma Gandhi managed to participate in its construction. Today, the temple of Lakshmi Narayana is more than three hectares of buildings of different scale, a huge sacred garden. The architectural style of the temple is fully consistent with the traditional canons of the construction of sacred structures. The style of Lakshmi Narayana corresponds to the canons of building temples in the north of the country, and is called Nagara. So familiar to us ideas about the Indian temple with thousands of sculptures on the walls of the building just corresponds to this style. Sculptors and artists from the city of Varanasi decorated the main tower of the temple, almost fifty meters high, with many frescoes, statues depicting scenes from the sacred texts of Hinduism.

Akshardham

The largest Hindu temple complex in India (and, accordingly, in the world) was built quite recently - in 2005. There are many museums on its territory. Perhaps it is due to the diversity of this place that three-quarters of the tourists visiting Delhi go here first of all. Unlike the temple of Lakshmi Narayana, this complex combines all the architectural canons of the country. If you don't have enough money to see all the great cultures of India with your own eyes, then you should definitely visitat least in Akshardham.

The religious building of Radha Parthasaratha

This temple is the third most famous and visited temple in Delhi. Unlike the previous ones, it is dedicated to the god Krishna. It also opened quite recently - in 1998. The temple can be called sacred not only for Hindus, but also for Hare Krishnas - a bit of exoticism that has long been familiar in the mosaic of a modern city in the post-Soviet space. Its peculiarity also lies in the fact that the Vedic heritage of India plays a special role in the construction of the temple. It is located near the ancient capital of the Aryans, Indraprastha, and it was here, according to legend, that Krishna told the ancient prince Arjuna his teachings.