Martand Sun Temple, Anantnag: History, Timings & Visitor Guide

Martand Sun Temple is open every day, usually from early morning to late evening with a break in the afternoon. Darshan and aarti timings change with the season and on festival days.

• MorningOpens early morning (around 5 to 6 AM)
• AfternoonShort break around midday at many temples
• EveningEvening aarti around sunset, closes by about 8 to 9 PM

Ask the temple office on arrival for the day's aarti schedule.

Dress Code & Temple Rules

• DressModest, traditional clothes covering shoulders and knees
• FootwearRemove before entering; use the shoe stand
• PhotographyNot allowed inside the sanctum
• Not AllowedLeather items, tobacco, alcohol, non-veg food
• QueueFollow queue lines and staff instructions on festival days

According to Kalhana, the Martand Sun Temple was commissioned by Lalitaditya Muktapida in the eighth century CE.

According to Jonaraja (fl. 1430) as well as Hasan Ali, the temple was destroyed by Sikandar Shah Miri (1389-1413) in a zeal to Islamise society under the advice of Sufi preacher Mir Muhammad Hamadani; Jonaraja pinned the blame on his chief-counsel Suhabhatta, a Brahman neo-convert who was held to have manifested a reign of intense persecution for the local Hindus, whereas Ali particularly affirmed Sikandar's convictions in these aspects.

Scholars caution against accepting these sources at face value — Jonaraja was appointed by Sikandar's son, who sought to bring back the Brahminical elite into the royal fold, while later Muslim chroniclers had their motives to fit the past into an idealist tale of orthodox Islamic morality. According to Chitralekha Zutshi and Richard G. Salomon, Sikandar's policies were guided by realpolitik and, like with the previous Hindu rulers, an attempt to secure political legitimacy by asserting state power over Brahmans and gaining access to wealth controlled by Brahminical institutions. J. L. Bhan notes a stone sculpture—a four-armed Brahma, sculpted by the son of a Buddhist Sanghapati and dedicated to Sikandar—to challenge simplistic notions of religious persecution. Slaje disagrees about the absence of religious motivations but notes the aversion of Brahmin chroniclers to be, largely, the result of resistance to the gradual disintegration of caste-hierarchy under Muslim influence.

Architecture of Martand Sun Temple

The Martand temple was built on top of a plateau from where one can view the whole of the Kashmir Valley. From the ruins and related archaeological findings, it can be said that it was an excellent specimen of Kashmiri architecture, which had blended the Gandharan, Gupta, Chinese and possibly Syrian-Byzantine forms of architecture.

The temple has a colonnaded courtyard, with its primary shrine in its center and surrounded by 84 smaller shrines, stretching 220 feet long and 142 feet broad in total and incorporating a smaller temple that was previously built. The temple turns out to be the largest example of a peristyle in Kashmir and is complex due to its various chambers that are proportional in size and aligned with the overall perimeter of the temple. In Hindu temple architecture, the primary entrance to the temple is situated on the western side of the quadrangle and is the same width as the temple itself, creating grandeur. The entrance is highly reflective of the temple as a whole due to its elaborate decoration and allusion to the deities worshiped inside. The primary shrine is located in a centralised structure (the temple proper) that is thought to have had a pyramidal top - a common feature of the temples in Kashmir. Various wall carvings in the antechamber of the temple proper depict other gods, such as Vishnu, and river goddesses, such as Ganga and Yamuna, in addition to the sun-god Surya.