Avantiswami and Avantisvara temples

Two temples in Avantivarman’s town

Avantiswami and Avantisvara are two distinct temple complexes at Avantipura, also called Awantipora, beside the Jhelum in the Kashmir Valley. Both are associated with Avantivarman, the ruler whose accession in 855 or 856 began the Utpala dynasty. Avantiswami was dedicated to Vishnu; Avantisvara to Shiva. Their similar names preserve the royal association, but their plans, surviving decoration and excavated objects should not be combined into a single building history.

Kalhana says that Avantivarman founded the town at a place called Vishvaikasara. He places the foundation of Avantiswami before the ruler’s accession and that of Avantisvara after he obtained the throne. This sequence is more precise than saying that both were built in the same year. It still supplies no construction month, opening ceremony date or complete building chronology. The catalogue’s approximate 855 date marks the historical setting of the pair.

The town had a life beyond its royal founder. Its temples remained institutions with property and resources, and their enclosed courts could become involved in military conflict. The ruins preserve parts of those longer histories alongside the remains of the ninth-century foundations.

Identifying the ruins

Early surveys had to work around considerable quantities of earth and debris. M. A. Stein noted that Alexander Cunningham had identified the smaller complex in the village as Avantiswami and the larger one near Jaubror as Avantisvara. With the central shrines badly ruined, Stein did not regard their different sizes as sufficient proof of the identification.

Daya Ram Sahni’s subsequent excavations provided a firmer basis for identifying Avantiswami. He pointed to the Vishnu imagery on its stairs and elsewhere in the complex. He also rejected Cunningham’s assumption that the larger temple necessarily represented greater expenditure after accession: the smaller complex contained much more elaborate carving.

Sahni found Shaiva sculptures at Avantiswami as well. He proposed that these had been transferred from another temple, perhaps Avantisvara. The findspot is an excavation observation; the proposed transfer is his interpretation. At the stage described in his report, the central shrine of Avantisvara was still incompletely explored. The report’s provisional statements should remain provisional when reconstructing how the identifications developed.

The excavation campaign

Sahni’s account appeared in the Archaeological Survey of India’s annual report for 1913–14, published in 1917. It records earlier investigations and conservation proposals, including Vogel’s visit in 1903 and John Marshall’s recommendation in 1907 that the site be thoroughly excavated. Work under J. C. Chatterji began in 1910.

According to Sahni, Chatterji exposed much of the peristyle, the surrounding range of cells and columns, but stopped well above the original courtyard floor. Sahni resumed the excavations in autumn 1913 and continued through subsequent seasons. The report therefore describes a campaign, not a discovery completed on a single day in 1913.

Before dismantling the confused remains over Avantiswami’s central shrine, the excavators numbered blocks and photographed the different sides. They then moved stones to the courtyard. Sahni reported substantial losses of building material and recovered architectural stones from the riverbank. These details matter when reading the site: its visible arrangement reflects both medieval building and damage and modern excavation and conservation.

Avantiswami’s courtyard and shrine

Sahni measured Avantiswami’s paved courtyard at 174 feet from east to west and 148 feet 8 inches from north to south. The central shrine stood on two platforms and had a western entrance. Its other faces carried niches. The shrine itself was badly damaged, but parts of its base and stairs survived much more clearly.

Four subsidiary shrines occupied the corners of the quadrangle. Sahni also recorded two smaller shrines between the eastern corner shrines and regarded them as later additions. Pedestals, spouts and reservoirs helped him reconstruct the handling of water used in bathing images. A drain carried rainwater out of the courtyard. These practical features belonged to the operation of the complex as well as to its architectural design.

The surrounding colonnade contained 69 cells. Their entrances used trefoiled arches and pediments, with carved pilasters bearing floral, geometric and figurative decoration. Some cells retained image pedestals. A moulded base between the main stair and gateway was interpreted as the support for a Garuda standard, although neither the column nor its crowning figure was recovered.

The missing roofs impose limits on reconstruction. Sahni discussed alternative forms for the colonnade roof and revised his preference in a note. The surviving bases and carved blocks provide evidence for parts of the elevation, but a complete restored silhouette would involve interpretation.

Images and carved scenes

The decoration makes Avantiswami more than a collection of walls. Sahni described seated Vishnu groups on the main stair, Garuda figures, river goddesses at the gateway and numerous ornamental bands. The gateway’s two chambers were richly decorated, while some figures were already too damaged for secure identification.

One recovered Vishnu statue retained a human front face, animal side faces and another face on the back. Sahni described its crown, ornaments, garment, weapons and attendants, together with an Earth goddess emerging between the deity’s feet. The principal image from the central sanctuary was not recovered intact. Related sculptures can inform its interpretation without becoming proof of its exact original appearance.

Identifications of individual scenes have changed. A bearded figure, attendant groups and possible royal donors received tentative explanations in Sahni’s report. Ram Chandra Kak’s later account also uses qualifications when discussing donors and certain goddesses. A possible portrait of Avantivarman should therefore be described as an interpretation, not as an inscribed and securely identified likeness.

In 1926, Ananda Coomaraswamy compared a Vishnu statuette in the University of Pennsylvania Museum with the excavated Avantipura figures. He used the comparison to revise an earlier dating. He also suggested that the museum object probably came from the same site. That suggestion is not a documented excavation provenance, even though the stylistic comparison is part of the history of studying Kashmiri sculpture.

Avantisvara’s different design

Avantisvara has a larger courtyard and a less elaborate surviving gateway. Sahni measured the court at 201 feet 6 inches by 173 feet 10 inches and described it as unpaved. He found evidence for columns outside the western range, but rejected a reconstruction that supplied an internal colonnade simply by analogy with Avantiswami.

The central terrace measured 57 feet 4 inches along each side and rose approximately ten feet. A stair projected from each face, and smaller platforms were attached at the corners. Sahni interpreted these as the bases of subsidiary shrines. Counting them as parts of a single enormous terrace had led Cunningham to propose an exaggerated height for the main temple.

Carved fragments suggested a decorated superstructure, while Sahni thought some intended ornament on the gateway and stairs had never been completed. His investigation of the central shrine was still unfinished when this account was prepared. The absence of a recovered image at that stage does not prove that the sanctuary had always lacked one.

Coins, pottery and later use

Sahni recorded 121 coins at Avantiswami, in addition to badly defaced examples. His list extended across several periods, including coins attributed to early Kashmiri rulers, the sultans, Afghan rulers and the Dogra period. Such a spread cannot be treated as the contents of one ninth-century foundation deposit. Find context and later use matter as much as the ruler named on a coin.

The separate hoard of 108 copper coins was reported under Avantisvara. It came from a small earthen jar west of the gateway. Sahni’s identifications included a range of rulers and a substantial number of worn pieces. This hoard should not be confused with the Avantiswami total, or moved to the other temple simply because the better-known complex is often used as a name for both.

Pottery at Avantiswami included large storage vessels, cooking pots, water containers and terracotta objects. Some jars contained decayed grain. Sahni explicitly warned that jars found above the courtyard floor need not be as old as the temple. These finds document changing uses of the site, rather than providing a single frozen picture of life under Avantivarman.

Fragments of birch-bark manuscripts from two cells contained accounts of worship supplies. Sahni interpreted them as evidence of later reuse. He also read a jar inscription naming Avantivarman and bearing the number 1583. He tentatively assigned that date to the Vikrama era and converted it to 1527 CE. On that reading, the inscription preserves a much later association with the founder’s name; it is not a contemporary ninth-century dedication.

Endowments, conflict and damage

Kalhana records the confiscation of villages supporting Avantiswami and other temples under Kalasha. The account shows that temple wealth could be redirected by rulers long before the later sultanate. Stein also discusses the use of Avantiswami’s enclosed courtyard as a defensive position during a siege in Jayasimha’s reign.

Sahni attributed the temples’ destruction to Sikandar at the end of the fourteenth century. His excavation account nevertheless describes a longer physical history. He argued that much of Avantiswami’s colonnade had already been buried by silt before that destruction, helping to preserve lower carvings. He also found evidence of later occupation and reuse.

The attribution to Sikandar is part of Sahni’s historical interpretation. The buried surfaces, displaced stones, missing sculpture and later deposits require attention in their own right. They should not all be assigned automatically to one incident. Earlier property confiscation, military use, accumulation of deposits, structural damage, removal of material and renewed activity are separate processes, even when the evidence cannot date each one precisely.

The surviving record

The Archaeological Survey of India’s January 2024 list records Avantiswami and Avantisvara separately among its protected monuments at Avantipura in Pulwama. That administrative listing establishes their recorded status at that date. It does not by itself describe their present condition or verify every reconstruction of their history.

Together, the complexes preserve evidence of Kashmiri royal patronage, stone construction, sculpture, ritual activity and the subsequent lives of religious sites. Reading them requires both the chronicle and the excavated remains. A fuller history also depends on checking excavation photographs and plans, tracing museum objects and comparing later conservation records with the early reports.