‘Vagdevi idol’s pedestal inscription shows its consecration at Bhojshala’

Indore: Three strands of evidence — literary texts, epigraphic conclusions and architectural references — formed the backbone of arguments placed before the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday, as hearings resumed in Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque dispute.Advocate Manish Gupta, representing independent petitioner Kuldeep Tiwari, laid before the bench of Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi, a structured case asserting that the disputed monument was, in its original form, both a temple and a Sanskrit learning centre — raised during the Parmar era and bearing the unmistakable imprint of that civilisation.Gupta began by anchoring Dhar in history. Under Raja Bhoj, he submitted, the city was no provincial outpost but a celebrated seat of Sanskrit learning — a place that drew scholars from Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions.The site in question, he argued, functioned as a working temple and educational institution long before its conversion into a mosque, with physical vestiges of its earlier identity still discernible to the trained eye.Among the more concrete pieces of evidence he invoked were the so-called ‘Sarvabandhi' inscriptions and large stone slabs, which he characterised as pedagogical instruments — tools deployed to teach Sanskrit grammar to students of the institution.When the bench sought documentary corroboration, Gupta turned to the pedestal inscription of the Vagdevi Saraswati idol, presently held in British Museum in London. Drawing on Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) publications, he submitted that the inscription records the idol as "prasthapitam" — formally and ritually consecrated — during Raja Bhoj's reign. The idol, he emphasised, was not casually placed but ceremonially installed within a functioning temple, a distinction with considerable legal and historical weight.To fortify the evidentiary standing of historical texts and gazetteers, Gupta relied on the Supreme Court's landmark Ayodhya judgment. Such sources, he argued, may not independently establish title, but they carry legitimate corroborative value — and courts are entitled to draw on public historical records when piecing together contested origins. Read collectively, he contended, these sources converge on a single conclusion: the structure began as a temple.Gupta again turned to the Samarangana Sutradhara — an 11th-century treatise on architecture attributed to Raja Bhoj and argued that Bhojshala complex does not merely resemble the conventions described in the text; its physical layout mirrors its prescriptions with notable precision — from the placement of central Vedic platforms to cardinal-direction orientation and specific proportional measurements.Particularly pointed were his references to ASI survey findings identifying a central brick structure as a vedi or havan kund, its dimensions aligning with those specified in the treatise. He went further: analysis revealed that the bricks of this central structure and those of the surrounding foundation were fired from the same kiln — evidence, he submitted, of a unified, deliberate original construction rather than accumulated or piecemeal building activity over time.Hearings will continue on Thursday.