Gopinath Mandir, Gopeshwar

The ASI dates the temple to the eighth century AD, noting that its plan, elevation and ornament closely resemble those of the Mrityunjaya temple at Jageshwar. Incredible India attributes it to the Katyuri dynasty, which built many temples in Kumaon and Garhwal, and places it in the 9th to 11th centuries. The ASI's note that about twenty-one amalakas (the ribbed stones that crown temple spires) of different sizes lie within the compound suggests that the site once held many more shrines than survive today.

The trident carries the temple's oldest written record. According to the ASI, its first inscription, in late Brahmi characters of the sixth to seventh century AD, records that it was set up by Ganapatinaga in front of the temple of Rudra. The trident later fell, and a second inscription in Nagari records that King Asoka Challa of Dulu in western Nepal restored it in 1191 AD. The ASI notes that the nineteenth-century scholar Atkinson read the king's name as Aneka Malla, and that recent studies regard Asoka Challa as the correct reading.

The temple has been protected by the ASI since a notification of 1962; the trident was notified separately in 1920, according to the ASI Dehradun Circle.

Architecture and sacred features

The ASI describes the main shrine as a Nagara temple with a latina (single curved) shikhara, triratha (three projections) in plan and elevation. Its spire is covered with a mesh of chaitya-arch motifs, some carrying auspicious faces, which the texts call a jala shikhara. The chandrashala above the tall sukanasa (the projecting front of the spire) shows Shiva dancing as Nataraja. The mandapa in front of the sanctum is a later addition.

The compound also holds three miniature shrines, one of them in the valabhi (barrel-roofed) style of about the tenth century, and two double-storeyed buildings known as the Baradari and the Rawal Niwas, according to the ASI. The metal trident, over five feet high and about 20 cm in diameter per the ASI, stands within the complex.