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The Bhojshala (IAST: Bhojaśālā, ) is a historic building located in the city of Dhar, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. The name is derived from the celebrated king Bhoja of the Paramara dynasty of central India, a patron of education and the arts, to whom major Sanskrit works on poetics, yoga and architecture are attributed. The architectural parts of the building proper are of different periods but mainly date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuris; the Islamic domed tombs in the wider campus were added between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The monument was repaired under the Powars of Dhār and more extensively by the Archaeological Survey of India over the last five decades.A detailed account given in Alok Tripathi et al, Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), 10 volumes (Archaeological Survey of India, 2024).
Along with his literary and art support, Bhoja began constructing a Shiva temple at Bhojpur. If it had been completed to the extent planned, the temple would have been double the size of the temples at the Khajuraho Group of Monuments. The temple was apparently abandoned at the king's death in about 1055. Kirit Mankodi has suggested that it was intended as Bhoja's funerary monument. Kirit Mankodi, "Scholar-emperor and a Funerary Temple Eleventh Century Bhojpur," MARG 39, no. 2 (1986): 61-72. Saurabh Saxena, "Bhojpur – The Legend of Bhoj Continues…" Puratattva (November 9, 2022) may also be consulted. That building activity was taking place at Bhojpur in Bhoja's time is shown by a dated inscription in the neighbouring Jain temple. H. V. Trivedi, Inscriptions of the Paramāras, Chandēllas, Kachchapaghātas and Two Minor Dynasties, 2 parts. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, v. 7, pt. 2. (New Delhi: Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, 1978). The designs and rock-cut line drawings for the construction are discussed in a volume by Adam Hardy. Adam Hardy, Theory and Practice of Temple Architecture in Medieval India: Bhoja's Samarānganasūtradhara and the Bhojpur Line Drawings (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, 2015).
One of Bhoja's successors was king Arjunavarman ( circa 1210-15). He and others in the Hindu and Jain traditions held Bhoja in such high regard that they stated they were Bhoja's reincarnation or were described by others as such. Centuries later, Bhoja remained a revered figure as evidenced by Merutuṅga's Prabandhacintāmaṇi, completed in Gujarat in the early fourteenth century, and Ballāla's Bhojaprabandha composed at Varanasi in the 17th century. This tradition was revived in the 20th century, with Hindu scholars describing Bhoja as a champion and exemplar of the glorious Hundu past.
The inscription on the sculpture mentions king Bhoja and Vāgdevī, another name for Sarasvatī. The word 'Vāgdevī' literally means the goddess of speech, articulation and learning. However, later study of the inscription by Indian scholars of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, notably Harivallabh Bhayani, demonstrated that inscription records the making of a sculpture of Ambikā after the making of three Jinas and Vāgdevī. In other words, although Vāgdevī is mentioned, the inscription's main purpose is to record the making of an image of Ambikā, i.e. the sculpture on which the record is incised. Moreover, the inscription shows that the Sarasvatī at Dhār was the Jain form of the goddess.
The Chaulukya and Vaghela dynasty dynasties took an aggressive attitude toward Dhār, sacking the city repeatedly in the dying days of the Paramāra regime. They removed libraries to western India where Paramara texts were copied and preserved, the Ṛṣbhapañcāśikā among them. An inscription of Vīsaladeva from Kodinar dated 1271 records the creation of a pleasure garden ( ketana) and college ( sadas) sacred to Sarasvatī, suggesting that in addition to texts, the kings of Gujarat also removed the sacred image of Sarasvatī and built a new temple for her, not far from Somanath. It is well documented that Hindu sacred places have moved, a notable case being the image of Rām that was found in Ayodhya and is now in Orchha. The goddess Sila Devī in Amber Fort was likewise brought from eastern India to Rajasthan, and the shifting of sacred images is found in Jainism. The practice has deep routes in India, going back to at least the fifth century.
Claims about the nature and history of the building have been ongoing since the early part of the twentieth century, with the authorities of Dhar State issuing rulings prior to Independence. However, legal challenges to the status quo have been mounted periodically, including a March 2024 writ to the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The court stated that "The detailed arguments at the Bar by all the contesting parties fortify the court's belief and assumption that the nature and character of the whole monument admittedly maintained by the Central government needs to be demystified and freed from the shackles of confusion." The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of India. The Archaeological Survey of India undertook a detailed survey and assessment as a result of the court order, their report in ten volumes released in 2024.Alok Tripathi et al, Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), 10 vols. (Archaeological Survey of India, 2024). The finding are currently being digested and despite claims made in the press, no definitive conclusions reached and no reviews of the ASI report as yet published in the scholarly literature..
Exploration and inscriptions
The archaeological sites at Dhār, especially the inscriptions, attracted the early attention of colonial Indologists, historians and administrators. Malcolm mentioned Dhār in 1822, along with building projects such as the dams planned and completed by King Bhoja. The scholarly study on the inscriptions of Bhojśālā continued in the late nineteenth century with the efforts of Bhau Daji in 1871. A fresh page was turned in 1903 when K. K. Lele, Superintendent of Education in the Princely State of Dhār, reported a number of Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions in the walls and floor of the pillared hall at Kamāl Maula. Study of the inscriptions has been continued by various scholars to the present. The variety and size of the inscribed tablets at the site, among them two serpentine inscriptions giving grammatical rules of the Sanskrit language, show that materials were brought from a wide area and a number of different structures.
Rāüla vela of Roḍa
Malcolm mentioned that he removed an inscribed panel from the minbar of the Kamāl Maula. This is the inscription now identified as the Rāüla vela of Roḍa, a unique poetic work in the earliest forms of Hindi. This inscription was kept first in The Asiatic Society of Mumbai and was later transferred to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai.
The Kūrmaśataka
Among the inscriptions found by K. K. Lele was a tablet with a series of verses in Prakrit praising Kūrma. This is not the well-known Kūrma incarnation of the god Vishnu, but rather the primal tortise or Ādikūrma. The Kūrmaśataka is attributed to king Bhoja but the palaeography of the record itself suggests that this copy was engraved in the thirteenth century, probably in the time of Arjunavarman. The text was published by Richard Pischel in 1905–06, with a new version and translation appearing in 2003 by V. M. Kulkarni. The inscription is currently on display inside the building.
The Vijayaśrīnāṭikā
Another inscription found by K. K. Lele in 1903 is part of a drama called Vijayaśrīnāṭikā composed by Madana. The preceptor of king Arjunavarman, Madana bore the title 'Bālasarasvatī'. S. K. Dishit, Pārijātamañjarī alias Vijayaśrī by Rāja-Guru Madana alias Bāla-Sarasvatī
/ref> The inscription opens with an invocation to Śiva and reports that the play was performed before Arjunavarman in the temple of Sarasvatī. This suggests that the inscription came from the site of a Sarasvatī temple. S. K. Dishit, Pārijātamañjarī alias Vijayaśrī by Rāja-Guru Madana alias Bāla-Sarasvatī
/ref> The play refers to the temple under various names -- Bhāratī bhavana, Śāradā sadman -- and says that it was “the chief temple that adorned the eighty-four cross-roads of Dhar.” Old Dhār being laid out as a grid, the main temple would have stood at the centre. Only the first two acts of the play are preserved, the final acts would have been given in a second tablet that has not been located. The inscription is currently on display inside the building, just inside the entrance.
Grammatical inscriptions: Serpentine scimitars of Udayāditya and Naravarman
The building also contains two serpentine grammatical inscriptions. These records, which contain the system of Sanskrit phonology and grammar, prompted K. K. Lele to describe the building as the Bhojśālā or Hall of Bhoja because king Bhoja was the author of a number of works on poetics and grammar, among them the Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa or 'Necklace of Sarasvatī'. (2025). 9788120832848 ISBN 9788120832848 The colophon of the grammatical chart, however, is inscribed with the statement that it is the "unique magical sword belonging to kings Udayāditya and Naravarman, the worshippers of Śiva, for the preservation of language and society."Saarthak Singh, “Serpentine Scimitars and Sarasvati’s Speech: The Materials of Knowledge in Medieval Malwa, c.1100–1400,” Arts Asiatiques 79 (2025): 5-30. The earliest date that can be assigned to these records is thus the period of Naravarman, a Paramāra king who ruled circa 1094–1133.
Kodaṇḍakāvya and Khaḍgaśata
The fragments of two poems in Prakrit were removed from the Kamāl Maula campus to the Dhar Museum, Dhar Fort by the archaeological department of Dhar State and are still on display there.C., Parmar Inscriptions in Dhar State, 875-1310 AD, Dhar State, Historical record series, v. 1 (Dhar: Department). One poem is devoted the sword (Skt. khaḍga), the other to the bow (Skt kodaṇḍa), presumably that of Arjuna or Rāma. The texts open with the invocation oṃ namaḥ śivāya. The closing line of the Kodaṇḍakāvya, turning from Prakrit to simple Sanskrit, names the work and ascribes it to Bhoja. The writing style, however, is of the early thirteenth century from the reign of Arjunavarman.N. P. Chakrabarti, “Section III—Epigraphy,” Archaeological Survey of India Report 1934-35 (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1937), 55-67 (60) wherein Chakrabarti reports the fragments were found "in the debris some years ago and are now preserved in the Bhojśālā."
Rāja Bhoja's Sarasvatī
In 1924, some two decades after Lele identified the Bhojaśālā with the Kamāl Maula, O. C. Gangoly and K. N. Dikshit published an inscribed sculpture in the British Museum, announcing that it was Rāja Bhoja's Sarasvatī from Dhār. This analysis was broadly accepted and had a significant impact. The statue in the British Museum was often misidentified as Bhoja's Sarasvatī in the years that followed.
Ambikā inscription: translation
The translation is given here for ready reference.
Auṃ. Vararuci, King Bhoja's religious superintendent ( Dharmmadhī) of the Candranagarī and Vidyādharī branches, the apsaras as for the easy removal of, that Vararuci, having first fashioned Vāgdevī the mother and afterwards a triad of Jinas, made this beautiful image of Ambā, ever abundant in fruit. Blessings! It was executed by Maṇathala, son of the sūtradhāra Sahira. It was written by Śivadeva the proficient. Year 1091.
Iconography
The identification of the British Museum sculpture as Ambikā is confirmed by the iconographic features which conform to Ambikā images found elsewhere. A particularly close comparative example is the Ambikā in Sehore dating to the eleventh century. Like the Dhār sculpture, the Sehore image shows a youth riding a lion at the foot of the goddess and a figure with a beard standing at one side.
Present location of Sarasvatī
The inscription on the Ambikā statue shows that the Vāgdevī at Dhār was dedicated to the Jain form of Sarasvatī. However, the Vāgdevī mentioned is yet to be located or no longer exists. Merutunga, writing in the early fourteenth century, reports that Dhanapāla, the eminent Jain author, showed Bhoja eulogistic tablets in the Sarasvatī temple that were engraved with his poem dedicated to the first Jain Tīrthaṃkara Adi Natha. While the poem, the Ṛṣbhapañcāśikā, has been preserved, the tablets, like the image, have not been located.
Social tensions
As noted above, the building is a Monument of National Importance under the laws of India and is under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Both Hindus and Muslims have been granted permission to use the space for their prayers by the ASI. Tensions arise when the Vasant Panchami falls on a Friday. The ASI attempts to assign hours to both Hindus and Muslims on such days. However, this been a source of communal friction and occasional disturbance when the religious group scheduled for the earlier time slot refuse to vacate the premises in time for the next.
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