PLACES

KIKLI

Kikli (Wal T; 17° 50' N, 74° 00' E; RS. Wathar 14 m. NE; p. 2,768), a small village twelve miles south-east of Wai and about three miles east of the junction of the Poona and Wai-Pancvad roads is remarkable for a group of ancient temples. The village is about a mile west of the Candan Vandan forts and is easily reached on foot or on horseback from Pancvad, a favourite camp on the Poona-Bangalore road three miles west. The temples are situated in an enclosure about 120 feet square. Two are in complete ruins, the one razed to its foundations and the other, a mere heap of stones. The third is evidently built largely from the stones of the second and on the plan of the first. It faces east and consists of an outer hall or mandap eighteen feet square, flat roofed and open at the sides, leading by a door in the west into an inner hall twenty-three feet square. This hall leads into three shrines each six feet square in the north, west and south. Thus the plan of the whole temple is cruciform. Each of the shrines is connected with the inner hall by a vestibule and while the inside is square, on the outside the courses of masonry overlap each other so that the plan of each shrine is also cruciform. There is no sign of any ancient spire or tower. The roof outside has lately been sloped with mortar and brick and mounted with a small urn or kolas. The mandaps are supported each by sixteen pillars in four rows of four each. The central four form a large square of twelve feet in the inner mandap and of ten feet in the outer leaving side passages 5½ and 4½ feet wide respectively. The walls of the inner mandap and shrines are here less than four feet thick and the height from ten to twelve feet. The outer mandap has in place of walls the usual balustrade forming the back of a stone bench. There is nothing remarkable in the decoration of the outer mandap. The pillars are of the usual Hindu type in plainly dressed rectangular, cylindrical and octagonal courses. An exception is one of the four central pillars which is carved like those of the inner mandap. The decoration of the inner mandap is elaborate. The four centre pillars are elaborately carved in floral and arabesque patterns. The centre rectangular course is cancelled with figures in relief representing on the two northern pillars the exploits of Krshna and on the southern those of Maruti. The basements are. supported by figures of satellites, male and female. The portals of the shrine vestibules have a wainscoting of figures similarly sculptured in relief. The execution is in all cases superior to anything elsewhere to be found in the district. All this carving comes from the ruined temples. Each shrine contains a ling with a case or shalunkha, the northern also containing an image of Bhairav. In the centre square of the outer mandap is a mutilated stone Nandi or sacred bull. On the plinth in front of the outer shrine are a few almost unreadable letters said to be the words Shingandev Raja to whom the building of this temple is ascribed. To its north is the old and probably original temple exactly similar in plan and dimensions with the present one in which only three lings now remain. To its east is the other old temple whose walls remain but the roof has fallen in and the mandap is a shapeless heap of stones. In the south-west corner of the enclosure is an ancient well about twenty feet square and thirty deep but choked up. All the images in the new temple including the Nandi have their noses broken off, it is said, by the emperor Aurangzeb. The stones of the original temple are also said to have been taken to Wai by the Bijapur general Afzalkhan when leading the expedition which terminated in his death at Chhatrapati Shivaji's hand. A number of cracks are seen in the temple walls, the mandap and the roof causing the rain water to leak inside. A small fair is held in honour of Bhairav on Dasara, the bright tenth of Ashvin or September-October.

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