Bhojshala

A pillared hall at Dhar, begun under the 11th-century Paramara king Raja Bhoja as a centre of Sanskrit learning, and large enough that historians put the complex alongside Nalanda and Taxila. The courtyard holds a yajna fire pit at its centre, ringed by pillars carved with deities and Sanskrit inscriptions. A British survey excavated an idol of Vagdevi here in 1875; an ASI survey in 2024 turned up pillars and sculptures pointing to earlier temple architecture, and in 2026 the Madhya Pradesh High Court declared the complex a Hindu temple to Saraswati. The carving is the reason to come. The site is contested, and visibly so.