Nandarayaji Temple, Nandgaon

Nandgaon, twin pilgrimage town to Barsana in the Braj region of Mathura district, is venerated today as the childhood home of Krishna’s foster father Nanda and mother Yashoda. The town’s own documented history complicates a simple reading of that identity: it was formerly called Nandigrama, named for Nandi, the bull associated with Shiva, and its hill was known as Nandishvar or Rudraparvata, regarded as a form of Shiva rather than connected to Krishna. Only from the sixteenth century onward — driven by the town’s proximity to Barsana, Radha’s traditional birthplace, and a folk etymology linking “Nandgaon” to Nanda — did the site take on its present Krishna-devotional identity.

The town’s principal shrine, the Nandarayaji Temple, was built in the mid-eighteenth century by Rup Singh, a Sinsinwar Jat chieftain, and enshrines images of Krishna and his brother Balarama flanked by images of Nanda and Yashoda. Numerous tanks and ponds around the town are locally associated with episodes from Krishna’s childhood. Nandgaon and Barsana together celebrate Lath Mar Holi each spring, the region’s most famous Holi tradition, in which women ceremonially strike visiting men with sticks (laths) in a playful re-enactment of Radha and Krishna’s courtship; the festival is documented as being held jointly across the two towns, celebrated respectively as the towns of Krishna and Radha.