The town
Mandi was founded by Ajbar Sen in 1527 at the confluence of the Beas and the Suketi, on the trade route between the Punjab plains and Ladakh — mandi means market, and the town's position accounts for its prosperity. It was a branch of the older Sen house of Suket, separated after a family quarrel.
The town holds an unusual concentration of stone śikhara temples of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Bhutnath and Triloknath among them are still in daily use.
The fair
The Shivratri fair at Mandi is the state's defining institution. More than two hundred village deities from the surrounding valleys are carried in palanquins to the town for a week, in a hierarchy of precedence with the deity Madho Rao presiding — a working expression of the Himachali system in which the village god, not the raja, is the ultimate authority in local matters, and the raja's own legitimacy derived from serving as the deity's regent.
Mandi entered British protection in 1846 and acceded to India in 1948. Much of the old state is now under the reservoirs of the Beas hydroelectric projects.
Further reading
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Nugteren, Albertina. Belief, Bounty, and Beauty: Rituals Around Sacred Trees in India. Brill, 2005
- Sax, William S. Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press, 1991
- Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.