Nachna Hindu temples, also referred to as Nachana temples or Hindu temples at Nachna-Kuthara, in Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, India are some of the earliest surviving stone temples in central India along with those at Bhumara and Deogarh. Their dating is uncertain, but comparing their style to structures that can be dated, some of the Nachna temples are variously dated to the 5th- or 6th-century Gupta Empire era. The Chaturmukha temple is dated to the 9th century. These temples illustrate a North Indian style of Hindu temple architecture.
Most of the temples in the area are in ruins. The best preserved and most studied monument is the Parvati temple at Nachna. The temples are built on a raised and moulded plinth, a square plan, a square sanctum that is surrounded by a circumambulation passage with perforated screen stone windows. The entrance into the sanctum is flanked by goddess Ganga and Yamuna. The Parvati temple has an upper storey with a doorway. The temple includes both religious motifs and secular scenes such as amorous mithuna couples. The temples are notable for some of the earliest known stone friezes narrating several scenes from the Hindu epic Ramayana.
The temples are near the Panna National Forest, are now a pilgrimage site, which is also referred to as Chaumukhnath.
Location
The temple site is near the Ganj village. It gets its name from the first publication in 1885 by Cunningham that brought it to the attention of western archaeologists during the British colonial era. Cunningham called it the Nachna-Kuthara temples in Volume 21 report of the Archaeological Survey of India, deriving it from the name of the district and another village in the region. The site is about southwest of Satna, southeast of Khajuraho, north of Katni, and about northeast of Bhopal. The nearest railway station is located in the city of Satna, while the closest major airport with daily services is Khajuraho (IATA: HJR).
The site is deep inside a forest territory, at the entrance of a difficult to traverse valley within the Vindhya mountains. This, speculated Cunningham, may have contributed to the temple's survival during the Muslim invasion of this region.
History
The early history of the site is not known. Cunningham, in his first publication, mentioned that the way to the site was full of ruins and partially bricked monuments, except for the two stone temples with stone reliefs at the site were in remarkably well-preserved condition. According to him, regional people knew about these temples, visited them and thought that Nacchna-Kuthara was an ancient capital city of the Bundelkhand region. Other findings suggest that the site has attracted significant numbers of pilgrims for centuries, and up to the present day. After Cunningham's visit, the upper cella of the Parvati temple collapsed, and it was later reconstructed. The site originally had not yielded any inscriptions in its immediate vicinity, but later two rock inscriptions were found at Nachna site of Ganj. These have been dated to the 470–490 CE period, attributed to Vyaghradeva who inscribes his allegiance to the Vakataka king Prithvisena. One theory identifies Vyaghradeva with the Uchchhakalpa king Vyaghra, but this identification is disputed. Nevertheless, the discovery confirms that Nachna region was geo-politically important in the 5th century, and it politically links this region to an era when Ajanta Caves were also being built. According to Pia Brancaccio, the artists who built the Aurangabad Buddhist Caves and the Nachna Hindu temples may have come from the same school because the "visual and design elements of cave 3 at Aurangabad display surprising similarities with images and ornamental patterns", particularly when compares the sculpture on Parvati temple's window to those in Aurangabad. She states that at least some of the 5th-century artisans building Buddhist, Hindu and Jain images in Nachna, Ajanta and Aurangabad regions may have come from the same guild or school, even though the sites are separated by a distance of about .
Date
The two temples of significance at Nachna site are the Parvati temple built earlier and the Chaumukhnath Mahadeva (Shiva) Temple probably built centuries later. The Chaumukhanatha temple shows signs of additions and reconstruction in later centuries which makes it difficult to place it chronologically. The region has yielded many ruins in the form of foundation remains, sculpture and decorative parts from what Madhusudan Dhaky calls some ancient Hindu temples that are "now not extant".