Where is the Matangeshwar temple located in Madhya Pradesh?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Khajuraho. The Matangeshwar (Matangeshvara) temple stands in the Western Group at Khajuraho, in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. It is an early-tenth-century Chandela shrine to Shiva and it is the one temple at Khajuraho still in regular daily worship — which is why it sits outside the fenced archaeological enclosure that surrounds the other Western Group temples. Its sanctum holds a massive polished sandstone lingam roughly 2.5 metres (about 8 feet) tall, among the largest in north India, and the temple hosts Khajuraho's biggest Mahashivratri gathering.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Mandu (Mandavgarh) is the hill-fort city of the Malwa plateau in Dhar district, famous for Sultanate-period architecture — Jahaz Mahal, Hindola Mahal, Hoshang Shah's tomb and Rupmati's Pavilion. Different region, different period, different architectural tradition.  (b) Chitrakoot, on the Madhya Pradesh–Uttar Pradesh border near Satna, is a Ramayana pilgrimage centre (Kamadgiri, Ramghat, Sphatik Shila). It is a living tirtha, not a Chandela temple complex.  (c) Tripuri (modern Tewar, near Jabalpur) was the capital of the Kalachuris of Chedi and is an archaeological site of that dynasty. A different dynasty in a different part of the state from the Chandelas of Bundelkhand.

Concept: The Khajuraho Group of Monuments was built by the Chandelas of Jejakabhukti (Bundelkhand) roughly between 950 and 1050 CE, in the Nagara style — a sanctum crowned by a shikhara, with a rising cluster of subsidiary spires and a raised platform (jagati). The temples are grouped as Western, Eastern and Southern; the Western Group holds the best-known ones, including the Kandariya Mahadeva (the largest and tallest) and the Lakshmana temple. Matangeshwar is the outlier of the set: not a museum monument but a functioning temple, which is how the commission frames it as 'the historical Matangeshwar temple'.

State PCS 2025 Q63 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q63 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer