Last year in August, we announced our commitment to map and document India’s ancient temples. Today we are pleased to report that over the past 10-12 months, our team, led by Vijay Sarde, has been diligently traversing villages within Pune District to survey and document pre-British era temples. At this juncture, we have reached the halfway mark of the project for the Pune District. The efforts have culminated in more than 100,000 written words and documentation of approximately 150 ancient temples, confined to the Pune district alone.

To share our findings, we have launched this website: www.heritagetemples.org

We eagerly welcome your feedback and suggestions, as we continue along in this mammoth project. Our project is the first of its kind in Maharashtra, and we have plans to scale up. In the near future, we intend to expand our team and extend our research to multiple districts within Maharashtra. Additionally, we have several other initiatives in the pipeline, updates for which will be shared as they come to fruition. 

About the Pune Project: 

Under the Pune Project, we aim to undertake a thorough mapping and documentation of the heritage temples of the Pune district. India has thousands of temples which are more than two hundred years old, and yet many of them are unknown or lying in a state of neglect. We work with scholars and temple experts to document these temples and bring it to the notice of the devotees and to the wider world.

In this regard, as our initial project, we have undertaken the mapping and documentation of all the heritage temples of the Pune district. By the term ‘heritage temples’ we mean all the temples above 150 years old which are important from architectural, religious or historical point of view. Apart from a basic documentation, we aim to prepare ground maps and a detailed report for major temples documenting their legends, architectural features, state of conservation, and the current temple ecosystem.

Given the enormity of the undertaking, we have initially planned to limit ourselves to Pune District. We chose Pune District for the pilot because it is easily accessible, the city has a large number of trained archaeologists, temple enthusiasts, and there are a large number of temples within the district which can be termed as ‘heritage’. So far, we have identified about 200 such temples in Pune District. Out of these 200-odd temples, only a few of them have been documented by previous scholars and only a handful of these temples are under the supervision of archaeological departments.

This website is a digital space where we can showcase these temples along with detailed information on them. We also plan to have a QR code system on the physical temple site where the details of the temples can be accessed by devotees, a Google Maps project for locating these temples, a 3D mapping of important temples and many other such initiatives. We also want to make the local villagers aware of the heritage value of their temple and the need to preserve it well. Through this effort, we hope to raise awareness among the people of the immense religious heritage of the country and encourage citizens to take ownership of these monuments that our forefathers have left for us as our inheritance.

The project is led by Vijay Sarde, PhD from Deccan College and an expert in the temples of Maharashtra. Unless otherwise stated, he is the author of all the temple-related entries. He is ably helped by a number of research scholars from the Deccan College. Pranita Harad, PhD from Deccan College, has translated the original Marathi writing into English. Manish Maheshwari, founder of Tattva Heritage Foundation, is the editor and conceptualizer of this project. This initiative is undertaken by Tattva Heritage Foundation, a non-profit organisation supporting scholars, artists and institutions working on critical projects relating to Indian cultural traditions.