On a previous visit to Gwalior I had visited a host of temples in Morena district, but had missed out on a couple of them, including the Kakanmath temple in Sihoniya village a little to the north of the other monument sites. This time I was able to briefly visit the early-11th c Kakanmath temple, enveloped in fog. I wanted to visit the temple for two reasons. The first was to see the unusual massing of the extant temple, which is in ruins, and the silhouette that is created of it. The tall shikhar (spire) of the temple has had its outer veneer of stone – which would have contained all the sculptural elements – removed, and the inner layer of stacked stones is visible. The second reason is that this temple was built by the same Kachchhapagatha dynasty that built the Saas Bahu temples in Gwalior Fort. The sculptures on these temples have a beautiful quality. In addition to this, the ASI museum in Gwalior Fort houses many sculptural temple pieces from Sihoniya and from the same dynasty that have the same beauty.

Unfortunately the sculptures that are still in place on this temple do not give that same feeling, though that might have something to do with the fact that the best sculptures now reside in the museum at Gwalior. All around the temple compound are placed broken pieces of the veneer sculptural stonework that would have belonged to the temple or side shrines.

Possibly the remains of the Nandi Mandap in front of the temple