Bhoram Deo Temple and its Inscription, V.S. 1608

Bhoram Deo Temple near the village of Chapari in the Mekhala range of Chhattisgarh has long been associated with the worship of the Gond deity Bhoram Deo. In this study Dr. S. L. Katare visits the site and re‑examines the inscription fixed on a stone slab at the southern door of the temple. Earlier explorers like Cunningham had recorded the inscription but offered little analysis. Katare shows that the inscription is dated V.S. 1608 (A.D. 1552) and that the temple was constructed before the establishment of Gond rule in the region. Contrary to popular belief, the temple had no connection with the Gonds; instead it was a temple of Lakṣmi‑Nārāyaṇa built by the Kalacuri ruler Lakṣmaṇa Deva. The inscription records the construction of a bearded man sitting with joined hands and contains nineteen lines of Nāgarī script. Katare notes that its language is Hindi with corrupt Sanskrit revealing the decadence of Indian culture when corrupt Hindi was used with Sanskrit. He corrects several misreadings by earlier scholars: the name of the king is Bhūpāla Singh Deva rather than Gopāla, and the word “Bhoram Deo” is not the name of the deity but part of the corrupt phrasing. The author examines the morphology of words such as māhārājādbhīrāja, śīvalaya and rāni in the inscription to reconstruct the original forms of the words. He also discusses the layout and dimensions of the inscription and emphasises that it provides valuable linguistic evidence for the Hindi spoken in Chhattisgarh in the sixteenth century. The article thus combines archaeology, epigraphy and linguistics to reconstruct the history of the temple and to correct long‑standing misinterpretations. It highlights the importance of reading inscriptions carefully before drawing historical conclusions and contributes to our understanding of the Kalacuri dynasty’s cultural patronage.

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