I don’t know much about the higher floors. I spoke with HH Radhanath Swami about it once and, if I remember correctly, he said that they were more of a tower. In other words they were decorative. The story goes that, seeing a large oil lamp burning on the top floor, Arungzeb (who happened to be the great grandson of the temple’s sponsor Akbar) became infuriated that the tallest building in the area was a Hindu temple. While his soldiers were tearing down the upper floors the Earth began to violently shake and they ran off, their destruction incomplete. Still, having been desecrated, the temple was seen as unfit for Govinda who was brought to be worshiped in Jaipur, where the Hindu kings were strong. The Govindaji Temple in Jaipur is super wonderful with thousands of visitors daily, all singing beautiful songs and passing out prasad. I’m hopeful that Robert will send us some photos of Jaipur soon.

Some details from the photos.

1. You can see some of the monkeys that Vraja Kishor is speaking of in image 2 (on the left side of the steps), and image 6 (there are four of them on the floor).

2. You can get an idea of how meticulously the temple is decorated with carvings in images 5 (there are carvings of Krishna’s lilas bordering the doorway, and above the doorway is a carving of Krishna lifting Govardhana Hill) and 7 (a huge sandstone lotus, weighing several tons, fixed on the center of the ceiling).

If it was 7 stories high… what was on the higher floors???