About Katha Atlas

Boundaries

This map shows India’s external boundaries and the boundaries of its states and union territories in line with the Government of India’s position as depicted by the Survey of India. It is a simplified, small-scale illustration for devotional and educational reference. It has not been checked or certified by the Survey of India; boundaries and coastlines are approximate. It is not an authoritative map and must not be used for legal, administrative or navigation purposes. For the authoritative depiction, refer to maps published by the Survey of India.

Boundaries: Natural Earth v5.1.2 (public domain), India point-of-view edition, re-assembled by KathaVidhi to show Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir as in the Survey of India map of 2 November 2019; simplified for screen display.

Temples

The map shows 42,999 Hindu temples with a known location. 3,554 come from Wikidata (CC0), where 16,124 Hindu temples in India are recorded but most have no map position yet. 39,445 more come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0), kept as a separate layer; places already on Wikidata were not added twice. Temples are assigned to a state from their record or their position. Both databases are open and incomplete: many village and family temples are not yet recorded, names are often in the local script, and deities are recorded for only a few. Each card links to its record so it can be corrected; corrections appear after the next refresh. Data retrieved 15 October 2026.

The temple layer derived from OpenStreetMap is offered under the Open Database License (ODbL 1.0) as a download: temples-osm.json (© OpenStreetMap contributors). The Wikidata layer is temples.json (CC0).

Circuits, journeys and festivals

Every pilgrimage list and story place was checked against at least two independent written sources. Where traditions name different places, all are shown. Story places are traditional identifications, not historical findings, and the order of a journey is the order of the story, not a dated timeline.

Your privacy

The map is drawn from files on this site. It loads no map tiles and makes no requests to other servers. “Temples near me” uses your location only inside your browser. Your family places and yatra list are stored only on this device.

Corrections

A temple record can be corrected directly on Wikidata from its card. For a circuit, journey or boundary, please tell us; every correction is recorded. Corrections log →

The board and the rivers

The map is drawn as a board of hexagonal tiles, each cut exactly along the same state and national boundaries described above, so every coloured region follows the official outline. Rivers come from Natural Earth (public domain); their Hindi names were added by KathaVidhi.

Which deity a temple is for

Where Wikidata or OpenStreetMap records a temple’s deity, that is used. Where it does not, the deity is inferred from the temple’s name, for example “Hanuman Mandir” or “Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple”, and the temple’s card says so. About half the temples have neither, and they are shown as “other or not recorded”. The deity colours are therefore a picture of recorded temples, not a census.

The time machine

71 milestones, each resting on at least two independent families of written sources (two are marked as resting on one), among them Bharatkosh, Wikipedia, World History Encyclopedia, UNESCO, temple trusts and state governments. Coordinates come from Wikidata (CC0). Every date is labelled by kind, and the epics are given composition ranges only. The full list with sources is on its own page. Time machine list →

The Mahabharata

Sides come from the epic itself, in K. M. Ganguli’s English translation (1883–96, public domain) checked in two copies, and from S. Sørensen’s Index to the Names in the Mahabharata (1904). Capitals come from N. L. Dey’s Geographical Dictionary (1927), Alexander Cunningham’s Ancient Geography of India (1871) and Wikipedia, with coordinates from Wikidata. Capitals are traditional identifications, the soft regions are our drawing and not borders, and no date is given for the war. Mahabharata list →

Software

Leaflet 1.9.4 (BSD-2-Clause), self-hosted. The board, light layer and views are KathaVidhi’s own code.