Located immediately north of Papanasini Temple Complex and on the north bank of Papanasini Tank, Mangaleswara Temple dates to the Ganga period and was built sometime in the 14th century A.D.
Dedicated to Lord Shiva, the temple is now some 1.5m below the current road level so is quite well hidden from view. Some recent metal fencing and an ASI noticeboard should mean you won’t miss it.
On my visit the temple was locked, with some construction work happening around a row of shops immediately to the east. It took a little persuasion to be allowed in, and I was then rather abruptly ushered away after just one minute. For completeness sake I wanted to at least document this temple’s existence in my series of articles about the ancient temples of Bhubaneswar.
Not far from here is a path that runs along the eastern perimeter wall of the Papanasini Temple Complex, going north and ending up at Rath Road. Along this path not far from the main road the complex wall abruptly reaches the remains of an ancient temple that projects further forward (and so pre-dates the current complex wall I assume).
There’s some wonderful carvings to be seen on what remains on the exterior of this temple. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the name of this temple. If any of my readers can help I would love to hear from you !
The ruined temple has a modern annex that fronts Rath Road, so it is essentially still a living temple. In hindsight I wish I had explored this place a little more, but I was pressed for time and knew there were some very significant monuments still to photograph and document.
Google Maps fails to identify this temple, and my internet searches have been fruitless. I remain hopeful that some day a local to Bhubaneswar may be able to help me !
Note that for anyone attempting to find this Mangaleswara Temple on Google Maps, it is incorrectly labelled as Langaleswara Temple.
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Categories: Bhubaneswar, India, Mangaleswara Temple, Odisha
Kevin Standage 