Malinithan

Malinithan is an archaeological site containing the ruins of an early medieval period temple on the northern bank of the Brahmaputra River in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It is generally attributed to the Chutia kings in the 13th-14th century. Art-historical study of the iconography and development of Indian temple art suggests that the cultural period represented by the Malinithan remains extended from about the 10th to the 14th century. The scale of its stone architecture has also been taken to indicate construction under a prosperous polity before the Ahoms, with its latest phase assignable to the period of the Chutia kingdom. The temple is not mentioned in the 10th–11th-century Kalika Purana, indicating that the present temple was likely built after this period. The site may, however, have existed earlier as a local or indigenous shrine before its later development into a formal temple complex. As per the District Gazatteers (1928), the nearby Adi people called it the shrine of Matri Malanti. As per Sarma (2020), the presence of the narrow Akashiganga stream, similar to the sites of Tamreswari Temple and Buraburi temples, indicates that sacrifices were performed in the temple.

Scholars identify the chief deity of Malinithan with Dikkaravasini, described in the Kalika Purana as the principal deity of north-eastern Assam, and also associate her with the Kechai-Khaiti or Tamreswari form of Devi worship. Kechai-Khaiti is a tribal goddess found among various Bodo-Kachari groups. The worship of the goddess Kechai-Khaiti is performed according to her old tribal customs. At her main shrine located in Sadiya, the goddess was taken care of by tribal priests known as the Deoris (specifically the Borgoya sect of the Deoris).