Navagraha Temple

The Navagraha Temple crowns Chitrachal Hill in Guwahati, enshrining not a single deity but all nine graha (celestial bodies) of Hindu astrology and astronomy together – nine Shivalingams, each draped in a coloured cloth corresponding to its planet, arranged around a central lingam representing the Sun. This makes it a genuinely rare dedication among the temples recorded in this directory: rather than a single deity’s iconic form, it enshrines the entire Navagraha system as a unified object of worship, reflecting the deep intertwining of astrology, astronomical observation, and devotional practice in the Hindu tradition.

The standing brick temple was built under the Ahom king Rajeswar Singha during his mid-18th-century reign (1751-1769), the same dynasty responsible for several other Assam temples already documented in this directory, including the nearby Umananda and Sivadol temples. A connected nine-cornered tank, known as Silpukuri, was dug in the valley below the hill as part of the same building programme. Alongside Kamakhya, Umananda, and Basistha – all on hills in or near Guwahati and all covered elsewhere in this directory – the Navagraha Temple completes a distinctive cluster of hilltop shrines that has made Guwahati one of the most temple-dense pilgrimage cities in Northeast India.