The Temple of Vedic Planetarium, India

The Temple of Vedic Planetarium, Mayapur, India

…to be the World’s tallest Hindu temple.

The focal point of Indian architecture, like its culture, has always been religious in nature. Just as the Indian economic boom is bringing incredible economic and architectural growth in the secular area, so has Indian religious architecture started once again creating some of the worlds largest, massive, and most intricate religious architecture in world.

Now, plans are underway in Mayapur, West Bengal, located on the banks of the River Ganga near Navadvip, about 130 km north of Kolkata, to build another massive religious work: the tallest Hindu temple in the world, one of the largest religious buildings ever constructed (the largest being the Ankgor Wat Hindu temple in Cambodia), and one of the largest religious complexes to be built in last 200 years. A temple that, at 35 storeys, and will be just shy of the Pyramids in Giza in height, and without major repair is built to last over a thousand years –the Sri Mayapur Vedic Planetarium and Temple.

the temple includes a Planetarium and learning center, and is to be surrounded by a large Vedic Village, a Village Industrial Park, hotels and accomodations, and will house a large Vedic university, the Mayapur Centre of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

Completion of the project would lead to several things, including spin-off benefits for the local economy, improvement in healthcare and education facilities, availability of micro credit to the people. The idea is to ensure that tourist arrivals in Mayapur goes up by “1,000 per cent by 2020″. With proper infrastructure in place, Mayapur could figure among the top-20 tourist destinations in India.

Material Construction of the Temple:

No steel /will be used in the building of the Temple. The entire structure will be built with bricks fired from Ganga silt. An ancient Bengali palace near Mayapur, built essentially this same way, still stands after nine hundred years without modern technology or restoration. Hence, the brickwork is a viable lasting solution.

The Temple will be built five meters above the highest recorded flood level of the Ganges. The entire structure rests atop a poured concrete slab 2.5 meters thick covering roughly four acres. This slab will act as a raft to literally float the building on the muddy Gangetic delta which makes up Mayapur.

The First Concept:

The Sri Mayapur Vedic Temple and Planetarium is planned to be one of the most striking examples of Vaishnavite architecture, hence it draws heavily from the architecture of Vaishnavite tradition. In the ten or so years, it has undergone a design evolution that is a fascinating story itself.

The Vedic Temple design was created to evoke Vedic architecture, the miniature of the cosmos, and be true to the exceptionally large, intracate and ornimentally detailed architecture depicted in art and scripture. The first design of this Temple was to emulate the architecture of Ayodhya, which was the capital city of Ram. The architecture of Ayodhya has been depicted as reflecting the Himalaya mountains in both color (white marble) and its massive, lofty spires.

Design and architecture of the Mandir

The temple is a modern interpretation of ancient Nagara (Northern) and Kalinga (Orissan) Hindu temple design. It has a consists of three connected domed structures.
The first, the Exhibition Hall, will include many exhibits, a large planetarium, and a Garuda stambha (a column supporting the carved image of Garuda.) The smallest of the three structures, the Exhibition Hall will be about nine stories high. Construction for the Exhibition hall has already begun.
The second building, the Kirtana Hall, will be approximately eighteen stories tall and features an enormous vyasana for Sri Prabhupada at its center.
The third structure, the Shikar, or main temple, will stand about thirty-five stories tall. This building will house a magnificent Deity chamber and a beautiful glass and marble gopuram.

After much debating, the Temple was once again redesigned to reflect the ancient city of Dvaraka, Krishna’s capital city, which according to legend was so diverse and beautiful in its architecture that it was said to have inspired the various temple traditions of India.

Also added to this design was the conception of the Vedic Village that would surround the Temple, where traditional craft and industry would be promoted, allowing villagers in one of the poorest parts of India educational, economic and cultural opportunities, as well as the concept of using this tributary of the Ganga River as it has traditionally been, a highway used to ferry pilgrims back and forth from the various pilgrimage sites that dot its banks. Hence a harbor and related facilities also was incorporated into the plan.

The fourth and final design change came about around 2000. As the project really started to pick up steam, and as project objectives were better realized, the Temple underwent a radical (especially for temples) design change.

It was to not only be grounded in the traditional architecture of Gura Desham, but it was to be an modern elaboaration on this style that would eschew any architectural norms and notions of beauty proffed by Western, Islamic and Buddhist styles, and would instead attempt to make a futuristic style of Hindu Bengali temple architecture.

This goal of modernizing Bengali architecture is not the first time ISKCON has attempted to revolutionize modern Temple architecture. They are indeed very good at thinking out of the box when it comes to futurizing ancient styles. The Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple in Bengaluru (Bangalore), Karnataka state is a recently completed temple that is a modern take on traditional Dravidian architecture, incorporating both ancient and modern design and materials.

Temple of the Vedic Planetarium and Vedic Village

The Vedic Temple is just the crowning glory of the project, which also includes the establishment of the Vedic Village. The village is to be designed in three phases, phase one which will be developed concurrent to temple construction.

There are two major roads in the Vedic Village, Chaitanya Avenue, which leads to the main entrance, and Prabhupada Avenue, behind the temple which will lead to the Vedic University and Prabhupada’s Samadhi Mandir. Both roads and the village itself will be extensively landscaped. The village will see extensive dyking and drainage systems carefully integrated into the master plan. This area of Bengal is among the wettest spots on Earth, and has historically been prone to flooding.

An earthen dyke around the perimeter of the property, which will protect the whole township from floods. It will appear as a raised grassy area, reinforced on the outer side with rocks. A strengthened retaining wall on the Ganga side of the property will for flood protection, so that existing buildings can be retained intact.

Heavenly Harmonies
Any temple or sacred structure is traditionally considered as a bridge between heaven and earth. A formula that links the two is found in number, geometry and harmony which is encoded in the cosmology of the fixed stars and the moving planets. The Vedic Temple, like most Indian temples, incorporates this.

Pole Star Alignment

An example of the Temple as a planetarium is its alignment with the Pole Star. The Pole Star is the only stationary point in the sky, and everything else revolves around it, both day and night. The Pole Star sits at 23.5 degrees above the horizon, due North of the Temple. The Temple is designed so that when one stands at the South entrance and visually lines up the top of the gateway with the top of the kailasa upon the central sikhara, one will locate the Pole Star.

Spring and Autumn Equinoxes

March 21 and September 21 are known as the Spring Equinox and the Autumn Equinox respectively. They are singularly important days in the year since the Sun rises exactly opposite the East everywhere on Earth and sets exactly in the West. Also, everywhere on Earth experiences 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night, thus the equinoxes are days of perfect balance and harmony.

The alignment of the Temple to the four directions means that its relationship with the Sun will be strengthened on these two days each year, with the Sunrise occurring directly through the East Gate, falling at the feet of Sri Sri Radha Madhava sanctum sanctorum.

Size of the Mandir

The size that the temple will be is simply immense. A lot of the renderings don’t do justice to the scale of the project. Some comparisons with other major religious landmarks of the world:

Taj Mahal, India (17th Century):

St. Pauls Cathedral, London (16th Century):

St. Peters, Rome (16th Century):

The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt (2400B.C.)


The Project is to be completed by 2010-15 timeframe. Preliminary groundwork has begun.

Fonte: Indian Skyscrapers Blog
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