English: The Svarga Brahma temple is one of nine early Chalukyan temples to have survived in Alampur village, Telangana. Attributed to Queen Lokamahadevi, this Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva was consecrated in 704 CE. It thus represents the beliefs, culture and art of late 7th century and early 8th.

An exuberantly ornamented temple, its architecture harmoniously compresses and symmetrically arranges a majority of architectural elements found in Hindu texts on temple architecture with iconography from all three major traditions – Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism.

The temple illustrates niches, pillars, emblems, sukhanasi, gavaskas, amlakas, arches, mithunas, dvarapalas, gandharvas, kama, artha and dharma scenes. On the outer walls are found Vedic and Puranic gods, including Shiva in different manifestations (Nataraja, Lingodbhava, Tripurantaka, others), Vishnu in different avatars (Trivikrama, Krishna, others), Devi (Mahisasurmardini, Parvati, others), Kubera, Ganesha, Kartikeya, Ganga, Yamuna and others. Inside the temple, on pillars and walls are reliefs from Ramayana, Mahabharata and folk legends such as Panchatantra. Ceilings have Ashta Dikpalakas and other carvings, ornaments.

The temple shows many signs of deliberate damage and defacement (chopped limbs, chopped face/nose/breasts and sexual organs, chopped head of Nandi, beheading and others). Some weathering as evidence of more uniform erosion of exposed portions is also visible. The temple is an ASI, Hyderabad Circle protected and managed monument.

Above: pillars of the mandapa as you enter the temple