Precision, design, perspectives defines process of Ideas travel & are amalgamated in a unique Architectural language. It is a conversation between Bundela Rajputs reflecting mathematics physics - Datia
Reading Layers of Indian Heritage
“One of the most interesting buildings architecturally in the whole of India”
Sir Edwin Lutyens architect of New Delhi from 1912 to 1930, who termed it, inspired by Datia palace, two hours in the south, was Lutyens favourite building in India and influenced the design of Viceroy's House/Rastrapati Bhavan. He was so inspired by what he saw at Datia that he incorporated aspects of the palace in the interior
A town of great historic significance, Datia’s seven-storeyed palace built entirely of stone and brick by Raja Bir Singh Deo in 1614, is considered to be one of the finest examples of Bundela architecture in the country. Within the palace are some fine wall paintings of the Bundela school. An interesting blending of cultures can be seen in the frescoes in a temple. Datia takes its name from Dantavakra, a mythological demon ruler of the area. The palaces at Datia and Orchha are the best surviving examples of the Bundelkhand style of architecture that arose in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in the Bundelkhand area under the reign of the Bundela Rajputs.
Datia Palace was completed in 1623, and is known by a number of different names; Govind Mahal, Govind Mandir, Jahangir Mahal, Satkhanda Palace, Purana Mahal and Bir Singh Palace. The palace was built by Raja Bir Singh Deo, who ruled over Orchha from 1605 to 1627. Raja Bir Singh Deo, the ruler of Datia, was an avid builder of the times. He was responsible for the impressive Jahangir Mahal that forms part of the nearby Orchha Fort, and during his reign built over 50 monuments across the region. His chhatri is the largest of the fifteen chhatris to be found by the river Betwa in Orchha.
It is situated high on an outcrop of rock in the center of the town overlooking Lala Ka Talab lake. Datia, 40km north of Orchha on the road between Gwalior and Jhansi, is home to one of India’s most imposing 17th century residences.
Bir Singh Palace
A standout example of Bundela architecture- Datia Palace Construction started in 1614 and took 9 years to complete, the palace is said to stand in testimony to the friendship between the Mughal emperor Jahangir and Raja Bir Singh Deo. It was built in 1620 by King Bir Singh Deo after whom the palace is named.
Datia Palace is one of the finest examples of Hindu - Islam architecture anywhere in India. The blend of Rajput styles forms a typical feature of many of the Bundela monuments that still stand today.
Architecturally Datia palace was just as impressive as anything that can be found within the Orchha Fort complex, and yet here there are hardly any visitors at all to what is an unforgettable building.
This rasamandala ceiling is one of the earliest depictions of this theme among Rajput palaces. The scene painted in relief has been recently renovated by the A.S.I. maintaining the original colour scheme; carmine, ochre, white and black.
The bustling Datia city, near Orchha, stands out as a mini-Vrindavan with more than a hundred of Krishna temples. It shines proudly as if it were the testimony of its king’s devotion to Lord Krishna. The little town is also mentioned in Mahabharat as Datiyavakra and also boasts of a few temples dating back to the era of Mahabharat.
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| "Krishna watches kite flying", circa 1775, Datia, Bundelkhand |
At the end of these hundreds of glittering Krishna temples, adorned with a crown-like structure, stands the grand Bir Singh Palace overlooking the city of Datia. It is also famously known as Datia ka Kila or Datia Palace. Contrary to the image of the town, this palace is the specimen of the Indo- Islamic architecture that stunned even the best architect of the British Empire, Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens. Sir Edwin is said to have implied the style of such architecture combining Hindu, Muslim, Gothic and Persian style while designing most of the buildings of the newly built capital ‘New Delhi’.
The impact of Sir Edwin’s tryst with the Rajpu architecture can be seen in the buildings of North and South blocks of New Delhi including the grand structure of the Parliament building of India.
Named as Bir Singh Palace after its builder, this palace is an example of his taste for architectural creativity. Very few people are aware that it is a modified replica of Orchha’s Jahangir Mahal.
The sole reason you must visit this place is his architecture that would make your jaw drop.
The Govind Mandir Palace; A Saga of Friendship
Legend says that King Bir Singh, a friend of Jahangir and king of Orchha, was the one who helped ‘Salim’ (Jahangir) to win against his brothers and become the emperor of Delhi. The Mughal Emperor was later invited to the Kingdom of Orchha. And Bir Singh, the then king of Orchha, wanted a best place to welcome his best friend.
The preparations started and the workers were given a task to build a beautiful palace right opposite to the king’s palace. In a short period of time that was given to them, the workers had built the Jahangir Mahal of Orchha. The emperor was welcomed there with a grand celebration on his arrival. Though Jahangir stayed there for just a night, he appreciated the beauty of the palace.
Bir Singh, who expected a better architecture that can do justice to the greatness of the King, ordered the construction of the other palace at Datia.
The palace was then built using the aesthetically meaningful designs of both Hindu and Muslim style of architecture.
The Aesthetic Architecture and the Mandana Paintings at Datia Palace
This seven floored building is standing sturdily for centuries without any support of wood or iron. And this makes the architecture of Bir Singh Palace a unique one. This might be the tallest building constructed solely using stones and bricks. The building derives its strength from the ancient mixture of lentils, jaggery, and oil which worked in place of cement during that time.
The main building is constructed on the raised platform of a hill on the bank of Kama Sagar Lake giving it the privilege of being the tallest building in the town. The huge compound at the entrance was probably made for the welcome ceremony of the royal guests.
The entrance gate is carved and adorned with intricate paintings and carvings. A colourful image of Lord Ganesha guarded by horses on each side is something are the prominent features. But the most unusual one observed only in this palace in the whole of South Asia id the ferocious painting of a human-faced Sun accompanied by the flying dragons on both the sides.
Apart from the paintings of Ganesha and the horses, the painted delicate creepers and flowers (Locally known as ‘Mandana’ paintings) also beautify the marvellous entrance gate of the palace. The paintings can mostly be seen in almost all the households especially during the festivals. The Lakshmi Narayan Temple of Orchha is the top class specimen of the aesthetic imagery of Mandana paintings, and looking at these paintings made me imagine if the original gate was beautified with such paintings till its top.
The gate is further beautified by the balconies over it on each floor, with the last floor having a complete latticework suitable for the royal ladies to peep through.
The Palace is a kind of maze but you can get through it if you follow the next paragraphs.
After the complete darkness of the first two floors, the third one welcomes you with a painted balcony and a sprawling view of the town. This is the only accessible painting because the top floor is not open for the visitors. But remember to take a left turn towards the entrance side in order to reach this balcony from the open area.
The ceiling exhibits finely painted colourful flowers and petals with a huge wheel of ‘Stucco’ (embossed painting usually with human figures) Art showing the Bundeli dancers. The dancers are shown to be dancing around a huge white local flower in a circle. The ‘Rai Dance’ is the traditional folk-dance of the Bundelkhand region which is usually performed during the festivals, auspicious occasions, and celebrations. The balcony probably symbolizes the moment of celebration while welcoming any guests at the entrance that can clearly be seen from here.
Once you enter the courtyard area you would be able to see the 5-storied tower almost touching the sky with its Indo-Islamic style central dome. This tower gives it the look of a temple and probably signifies the status of its dweller who is venerated like God. This might also be the reason this palace is called ‘Govind Mandir Palace’.
If you would carefully observe, the tower seems to be standing at the center of the design of ‘Swastika’, L shaped construction meeting at the center point under the tower creates the design of a ‘swastika’.
However, there are no direct stairs to reach the tower’s floors and one needs to find the hidden gates in the walls in order to climb up.
Further, from your right-hand side, the narrow steps hidden in the walls would lead you to the fourth floor. The floor resembles an ancient Indian game of ‘Chaupat’ or ‘Pachisi’. The tower is connected with the domes built in each direction with a narrow bridge.
If at all inhabited ever, the king could have approached the queens residing in each dome(Chhatris) from his dorm in the center. The architecture would have helped the king in choosing a queen’s dome without giving any hints of his movement to the other queens.
Other narrow stairs from the left end corner would lead to the 5th floor which is nothing but a room that can accommodate a number of people. The passages leading to the centre tower are intricately carved and the exquisite murals and frescos on the interior walls make this building the finest specimen of Bundelkhand architecture.
The hidden accesses to the different floors really made me shout for some help. Moving in the Datia palace wasn’t different from cracking through a maze.
Stucco Art and Cueda Seca Tiles
While the interior of the tower has the Stucco art which is essentially made using the mixture of lime, mud, acrylic fibers, the exterior has the Cueda Seca glazed tiles.
Stucco Art and Cueda Seca Tiles at Veer singh palace Datia.
Unlike its usual forms, the domes of Datia palace has the brighter and more vibrant colors and more intricate designs on its tiles. No other architecture during that era had the use of these tiles in its beautification. Cueda Seca is a technique where a waxy layer is used while coating the ceramic tiles in order to prevent the mixing of the colors in the design of the overlaid paint, especially during the firing. The technique was prevalent during the Safavid, Timurid and the Ottoman Empire and has its origin in Central Asia. A few specimen of such art belonging to the same period can be seen in Samarkand.
Clearly, Bir Singh was exposed to such fine techniques while accompanying his friend Jehangir during his Central Asian and Persian expedition. This can be seen as his tribute to his friendship with Jehangir or just a gesture to please the Emperor by finely weaving the laces of such beautiful arts in this place.
Apparently, the artists were either brought it from Central Asia or the India artists from Orchha were specially sent to learn this art.
View of the Kama Sagar Lake from the 5th floor Lattice-work
The 6th and the 7th floors are closed for the tourists as its restoration work is in progress. The rooms are supposed to be the personal bedroom of the Maharaja and the dressing room of the Maharani. The top floor is an open dorm that served as a watchtower.
Thus, the palace can serve multiple purposes ranging from being a royal rest house, arsenal, soldiers’ quarters and even as a watchtower.
Mysteriously Unoccupied despite its Grandeur
As mentioned earlier, Datia palace was supposed to be occupied at least for a night by Jehangir. However, Jehangir could never make a visit to Datia. Later on, Bir Singh gifted this palace to his son Bhagwan Rao, the first ruler of Datia, who also couldn’t stay here. Bhagwan Rao lived in a smaller palace which is completely in ruins now and all his descendants made their own palatial forts and never lived in the Datia palace.
The locals believe that no kings were so great and worthy enough to do justice to the grandeur of Datia palace and thus it always remained unoccupied.
Locally, the palace is also known as Govind Mandir. Erected on a rocky ridge, the Bir Singh Palace has five stories with a central dome rising to 35m caps the palace. Suites of underground rooms hewn from solid bedrock on a series of different levels provide hot-weather accommodation. The palace has a square plan with a domed tower at each corner. The main entrance is on the eastern side, while the south opens out to a lake, the Karna Sagar.This palace is made entirely of stones and bricks without any use of wood and iron.
The palace is entered from the west with a wonderfully imposing facade with balconies, coloured tiles and paintings.
Another five-storeyed structure with apartments for the royalty stands in the central courtyard. It is connected by flying bridge corridors to the middle of each side.
The walls and ceilings were obviously once richly decorated, the best preserved was a complete surprise, a splash of vibrant colour in an otherwise mostly greyscale world.
The facades are decorated with bracketed balconies, kiosks, arcades and wide eaves which create a glorious play of light and shade. Strangely enough, for all its mesmerizing beauty, the palace was never occupied and is now a well-preserved monument with unusual persian style motifs.In fact many of the ceilings inside the palace have borders and medallions which resemble the rare carpets from Persia.
The main courtyard with a spectacular tower-like seven storey inner palace. the perimeter of the courtyard has three levels of rooms, connected to the inner palace by narrow bridges. These rooms and all their levels you are free to explore and get lost utterly within.
Maharaja Bir Singh Deo I (1605 - 1627) - was a contemporary of Mughal Emperor Jahangir. He was rewarded for killing Abul Fazal, the Prime Minister of Jahangir's father Akbar and was made Raja of Orchha in 1605. As ruler, he built the Twin forts of Orchha and Datia. He completed the Chaturbhuj temple and built Jahangir Mahal in the fort at Orchha. This is what Emperor Jahangir said in his entry in the Jahangirnama dated March 12th 1623 A.D. 'I honored Raja Bir Singh Deo, than whom there is no greater Amir among the Rajputs with the title of Maharaja and I promoted his son Jograj to the rank of 2000/1000'.
design of New Delhi’s North and South Blocks.
Remarkably, Datia Palace was never inhabited by a ruler, not even by Bir Singh Deo himself. Jahangir also never visited the palace, even though folklore says it was built specifically for such a visit. So the 440 rooms spread across 7 floors and built entirely from stone (no use of cement, iron or wood), which was completed just four years before Bir Singh Deo died, remained largely vacant.
In 1835 the palace was visited by Colonel Sleeman, a British soldier, and a report was published in the Datia State Gazetteer. The Colonel was curious as to why the palace was empty, and made enquiries. The locals replied that no present day ruler was worthy of a such grand palace, nor would one be comfortable living in a palace that had been built to house such a great king.
The photography opportunities here are almost endless, with interesting play of light across doorways, columned passages, and the added bonus of nobody around to accidentally photobomb the scene!
Baladar ki baoli:
Datia’s most attractive stepwell is an 1810-creation of the princely state’s ruler Parikshit. It is a large double storied structure built in an octagonal shape with a balcony that covers its upper level. At the edge of the balcony, overlooking the well-shaft are stone elephants. It has seen better days, with the plaster falling off now and the elephants crumbling.
The front of the well houses a small courtyard where water channels converge on a Shiva shrine under a canopy. Once the focal point of the community around, the place is little-visited now.
Chandewa:
East of Datia town on the road to Bhander, a fort-like structure looms on the right. Nothing outside indicates that it contains a stepwell, a large one at that. A long flight of steps goes subterranean towards a deep well-shaft. Pillared corridors line the sides, ideal places to escape the oppressive summer heat. Records indicate the well was repaired by Orchha’s Bundela ruler Bir Singh in 1618, also mentioning that the work was done over a pre-existing well which dated to the 11th-12th century CE.
The place comes alive during Maha Shivaratri, when the faithful make a beeline for the Shiva temple that lies beyond the stepwell, amidst fields.
Sirol:
Bir Singh constructed another baoli north of Datia town, indicating the town was a magnet for medieval travellers, who rested awhile at the baolis before reaching their destination. The Sirol baoli is entered via an arched gateway flanked by two huge towers, both in the trademark Bundela style so prominent at Datia and Orchha. The place, though a state-protected monument, is now lived in by a peasant family accompanied by their dogs, cats and cattle. Once a visitor gets past this menagerie, he finds himself in a stepwell identical to that of Chandrewa, except that it is even larger.
Khadauna:
The Bundela stepwell pattern is seen once more at Khadauna, further north of Sirol, close to Indragarh.
This baoli is entered via a gateway painted blue and was built under the patronage of a Bundela princess called Kunjawati, daughter of Bir Singh and sister to Hardaul Shah, a cult figure who forms the basis for many folk ballads.
The distinct feature of the Khadauna stepwell is that is now a temple. And apart from the main deity, the shrine-stepwell houses one little-known aspect – a tiny carving of Kunjawati, worshipped as a goddess, is housed in the depths of the stepwell. This legend of Bundelkhand lives on, four centuries after Kunjawati’s passing
Sirsa :
This otherwise simple circular well is an enigma. It could have been classified as another Bundela baoli except for extensive usage of temple stones along its walls.
The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the material of a 12th century CE temple – dated basis the stone carvings – was used when the stepwell was restored during the Bundela period.
The Chhatris
The royal families of Datia built Chhatris to commemortae their Martyr warriors. These are decorated with elaborate memorials with stories, myths and legends from the holy scriptures , somrtimes they also have a depiczion of the great deeds of those remembered. There is a hige complex of Chhatris built in the 18th and 19th centuries and really worth a visit. The chhatris are located just 10 minutes drive north-east from the center of Datia, by the shores of Karan Sagar lake. Here the royal families of Datia built cenotaphs to commemorate their dead.
Unlike most of the chhatris at Orchha, here there is a mix of sizes and styles, the larger constructions for the rulers themselves, and modest monuments for lesser members of the royal family. If you’ve already explored those chhatris at Orchha, the ones here at Datia may initially seem a little uninspiring in terms of size and setting. However, it is the interior of the chhatris where all that changes and makes a visit immensely worthwhile.
Many of the chhatris here are elaborately decorated with stories, myths and legends, as well as depictions of great deeds done by those remembered. Most of these paintings are in quite good condition, in the 1990s the A.S.I. worked here to fix leaks that were damaging the artworks on the walls and ceilings, and made efforts to try and preserve what remains.
What follows is a photographic account of each of the major chhatris, along with a brief description of who’s memory they were built for. You would have no idea of the colour and splendour housed within these monuments.
Chhatri of Maharaja Vijay Singh Bahadur
Vijay Bahadur was the son of Diwan Surjan Singh, who was adopted by Maharaja Pariksha and assumed power in 1839. He died in 1857 and was succeeded by Bhavani Singh who built the cenotaph.
Chhatri of Maharaja Bhawani Singh
Maharaja Bhawani Singh is credited with the modern progress of Datia, was a keen patron of scholars and, oddly, of wrestlers !
The Great Gama
With his support, the Indian wrestler Ghulam Mohammad Baksh (1878 – 1960), known as “The Great Gama”, became champion and amazingly was undefeated in a career spanning 50 years.
The ceiling of his chhatris is utterly breathtaking...
Maharaja Bhawani Singh ruled from 1857 to 1907, his successor Maharaja Govind Singh built his chhatri.
Bhawani belonged to the Bhasnai branch of the Orchha royal family, descended from Kunwar Har Singh Deo, brother of the famous Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha.
Chhatri of Maharaja Parichhat Singh
Parichhat ruled from 1801 to 1839, his chhatri was built by his adopted son and successor Vijay Bahadur.
Parichhat allied himself with the British throughout the wars with the Marathas; and was rewarded in 1817, on the deposition of the Peshwa, by a new treaty and enlarged territories.
The paintings here are a little different, with scenes of Datia rulers, animals, birds, the Bundeli army, mughal sardars, and epic scenes related to shri krisha
Chhatri of Maharaja Indrajit Singh
Indrajit ruled in Datia from 1733 to 1762, and succeeded his grandfather Ram Chandra. The chhatri was built by his son and successor, Maharaja Shatrujit.
Chhatri of Maharaja Shubha Karan
Shubhakaran ruled from 1640 to 1678, having succeeded his father Maharaja Bhagawan rai Bundella, the founder of Datia state. Shubhakaran sided with prince Aurangzeb in his struggle for succession, and received a mansab (military pay grade) of five thousand with the rule of Bundelkhand.
Known for his bravery, Shubhakaran built the Karan Sagar lake right next to these chhatris.
only thing one should expect is the unexpected. The Karan Sagar chhatris at Datia are a case in point, seemingly well off the tourist map and yet utterly beautiful.
Datia town is possibly one of the best kept secrets in the region, perhaps overshadowed by the group of monuments in Orchha, and off the tourism radar. It’s a great shame, with a little bit of investment this palace would easily rival other counterparts in the area, and it has played a part in influencing latter day architecture in India. But perhaps one of Datia Palace’s charms is that it still largely remains abandoned by humans, in much the same way as it has been for the last 400 years.
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