Dashavatara Temple

The Gupta temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, popularly known as the Dashavatara Temple, is the earliest known Panchyatana temple in North India. It depicts ten incarnations of Vishnu. It was the first North Indian temple with a shikhara or tower, although the shikhara is curtailed and part of it has disappeared.

Special features of this ancient temple, which is mostly in ruins, include carved figurines of river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna on the doorway to the sanctum sanctorum, three large carved panels of Vaishnava mythology related to Gajendra Moksha, the Nar Narayan Tapasya (meditation), and the Anantshayi Vishnu reclining on a serpent.

Vishnu is depicted reclining on the serpent Shesha

Vishnu dreaming

idol of draaupadi in dasatavatara temple

When Arjuna came home from a contest with his prize the princess Draupadi, he called out to his mother he had won a prize; his mother who was in another part of the house answered (not knowing what he had won) that whatever prize he had come home with he was to share it with his brothers. They were duty bound to obey her command

carvings in the doorways of dashavatara temple

sculpture of lord vishnu in the walls of dashavatara temple

sculpture of lakshmi and vishnu in dasavatara temple

Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu, supports the leg of the sleeping Vishnu

sculptures of vishnu along with pandavas and draupadi

rock idols of dashavatara temple

sculptures of naga king serving lord vishnu