The dacoits have kept their promise and stayed away from the area. Sometimes, some of them are spotted trying to keep an eye on the work from a mountain top.

Meanwhile, a dedicated team of archaeologists and workers have been giving shape to one of the most audacious tasks undertaken by the ASI. It was not the usual conservation and renovation work. The team doesn’t have any map or drawings of the temple complex.

“We don’t know what the temples looked like. We are building them almost from scratch. The key has been to keep finding stones of a similar pattern which fit in a particular structure,” said one of the officials at the site.

It’s a tedious process but the chances of stones of one temple getting used in another are remote. “They would just not fit. There would be one inch or half-an-inch of incongruity, and then we are able to make out that this stone does not belong to this structure,” the official said.

As they continue to clear the area, more stones and idols are being discovered, as also signs of more temples. “When we started work, we thought there would be about 40-50 small temples. But now, there are signs of about 100 temples and we don’t know how many more might be lying under the debris,” the official said.

Most of these are Shiva temples while a few have idols of Vishnu and Surya. It’s not clear who built this temple complex as the ASI has not been able to discover any engraving or distinct mark that could be related to a particular king.

... contd.