Bade Hanuman Mandir (Bade Hanuman Ji Temple)
Prayagraj (Allahabad), Uttar Pradesh, India
- Deities
- Hanuman
- Traditions
- other
- Worship status
- active
- Coordinates
- 25.4285, 81.8839
- Darshan hours
- Daily, approximately 5:00 AM-2:00 PM and 5:00 PM-8:00 PM, extended to around 10:00 PM on Tuesdays and Saturdays, per Wikipedia; confirm locally as timings can shift around festivals and the Kumbh/Magh Mela.
- Best time to visit
- October to March; the temple is an integral stop for pilgrims visiting the nearby Sangam, and is especially significant during the Magh Mela and Kumbh Mela.
- How to reach
- Located near the Sangam (confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati) in Prayagraj, close to Allahabad Fort, about 1 km from the confluence itself and roughly 7 km from Prayagraj Junction railway station; Prayagraj (Bamrauli) Airport is also nearby.
- Festivals
- Hanuman Jayanti (March/April), Rama Navami (March/April), Narak Chaturdashi (October/November)
Location
Open in Google MapsTemple tradition traces the origin of the image to a childless merchant from Kannauj who commissioned a Hanuman idol carved from Vindhyachal stone; after he left it at Prayagraj during a pilgrimage, he was blessed with a son, and the idol was later recovered and installed at its present site by the ascetic Baba Balagiri Ji. A separate strand of tradition, dated to 1582, holds that the Mughal emperor Akbar tried to move the temple to make way for fort construction, but the image would not budge, so he built his wall around it instead and set aside the surrounding land for the shrine.
What makes the temple physically distinctive is the roughly 20-foot image of Hanuman shown reclining rather than standing or seated, said to be unlike any other Hanuman murti in India. Because the shrine sits close to the Ganga near the Sangam, the idol is partially submerged by rising floodwaters during the monsoon each year, a phenomenon devotees read as an expression of Hanuman’s humility. The temple’s popularly cited age of roughly 700 years is a traditional figure rather than an independently documented one, and it continues to draw large numbers of pilgrims heading to the Sangam, with renovation and expansion work underway ahead of the 2025 Kumbh Mela.
Sources
- historical record: Cross-checked against Wikipedia's Bade Hanuman Mandir article: confirms the temple's roughly 20-foot reclining image of Hanuman, described there as the only one of its kind; that the idol is seasonally and partially submerged by rising Ganga floodwaters; the temple's location near the Sangam and Allahabad Fort; the tradition of a 1582 Akbar-era episode in which the Mughal emperor could not move the idol during a fort-building project and instead dedicated the surrounding land to it; ongoing renovation and expansion of the temple ahead of the 2025 Prayag Kumbh Mela; and daily darshan hours (approx. 5 AM-2 PM and 5 PM-8 PM, extended on Tuesdays/Saturdays) and the additional festivals Rama Navami and Narak Chaturdashi. Re-verified via a fresh fetch of the same article on 2026-09-23.
- oral tradition: The legend of a childless merchant from Kannauj who commissioned the idol from Vindhyachal stone, was blessed with a son after leaving it at Prayagraj, and of the ascetic Baba Balagiri Ji later recovering and installing the image at its present site, is devotional temple tradition rather than documented history; the temple's commonly cited age of about 700 years is likewise a traditional estimate rather than an independently dated figure.
For review
- The temple's approximate 700-year age and the 1582 Akbar-era episode are recounted in popular and pilgrimage sources but rest on temple tradition rather than a contemporaneous documented record; treated here as tradition, not settled history.