Martand Sun Temple

Martand's ruined courtyard of eighty-four fluted columns, built by the Karkota emperor Lalitaditya Muktapida in the 8th century, represents the high point of the distinct Kashmiri temple style that fused Gandharan, Gupta, Central Asian and Byzantine trefoil-arch motifs into a form found nowhere else in the subcontinent. Perched on the Karewa plateau above Anantnag with sweeping views across the Kashmir valley, the grey limestone complex was deliberately demolished over roughly a year in the late 14th century by the Kashmir sultan Sikandar Butshikan, leaving only foundations, column stumps and fragments of the trefoil facade. Even in ruin it is regarded as the single most important surviving witness to Kashmir's pre-Islamic temple architecture and a direct architectural ancestor of later Kashmiri stone shrines like Avantiswami.