{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Incredible India Travel | Social Impact & Culture Tours","title":"Ancient Goa Temples: Beyond the Beaches the Portuguese Could Never Destroy","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1363,"description":"Most people who visit Goa think its history began in 1510.That was the year the Portuguese arrived, defeated the Bijapur Sultanate and established the colony that would last 451 years. They left behind extraordinary churches, elegant colonial architecture and a cultural legacy that defines the Goa the world knows today.But Goa's history did not begin in 1510. It began two thousand years before that.And the most dramatic chapter of the story that most foreign tourists never discover is not about what the Portuguese built. It is about what they tried to destroy and could not.The Goa Inquisition, one of the most severe in history, led to the destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples across the region. The Portuguese made it illegal to practice Hinduism openly. Ancient Goa temples were demolished and their stones used to build the very churches that tourists photograph today. Communities that had practiced their faith for centuries were given the choice of conversion or exile.And yet three ancient Goa temples survived.Not by luck. By strategy. By courage. And in one extraordinary case, by being so completely hidden in the jungle that the Portuguese never even found it.In this episode we tell the complete story of these three extraordinary ancient Goa temples. We explore the Kadamba dynasty that built them, the 800-year Hindu kingdom whose artistic tradition the Portuguese tried to erase from the landscape of Goa forever. We stand at the Tambdi Surla Mahadev Temple, the oldest intact Hindu temple in Goa, hidden so deep in the Western Ghats forest that it was not rediscovered until 1935. We tell the story of Saptakoteshwar, the temple whose deity was rescued from Portuguese destruction by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj himself in one of the most heroic acts of cultural preservation in Indian history. And we visit the Mangeshi Temple with its extraordinary seven-storey Deepastambha lamp tower, the ancient Goa temple that disguised itself as a wedding venue to survive the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/eWrZ3doNBWF40S0S56sC17IDwfhLRtHiDkqKOrNCvtA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS85Yjg5/Y2Q3ODM2NzZkOTcz/NGJiMWMwMDEzMTFl/YjI3NC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}