Chola Temples in Karnataka - Department of Archaeology

We have attended a presentation on “chola temples in karnataka” by Mr.P.Venkatesan conducted the department of archaeology. He made a brief discussion about the other dynasties/ rulers who conquered Karnataka before Cholas.  The entire presentation was about two hours and I would l like to share my views and the information shared in the presentation.

Here is the list of rulers/ dynasties that conquered Karnataka before cholas

Kadambas of banavasi

Chalukyas of vatapi

Ganges of kuvalalapura

Rastakutas of malkhed

Chalukyas of kalyana

Ganges of talakadu

In the sculpture of dwarabalagas,an Inscriptions of rathathiraja was found. This shares a information that this dwarabalagas, were taken from Karnataka, after burning the city. These statues were placed in darasuram temple earlier but now they are tranfered to the art gallery tanjore.

Banavasi: earliest local dynasty

Chalukya : 

He showed the city of badami. The cave temples of badami, the fort, inscription of narasimha pallava and pulikesi. He explained about the fort, the siva shrine on the top of the hillock and 2 important inscriptions of badami.

1.       Pulikesi’s inscription – which was found in the middle of the hillock, which he explained as a unreachable place. It says, that pulikesi has constructed a very strong fort for his town, which cannot be destroyed by any other rulers

2.       Narasimha’s inscription : this is placed near the ASI’s museum. This says, narasimha won the capital city, badami and he has ruled this city for 13 years.

 Aihole : 

Aihole has a kailasanathar temple, which resembles the kailasanathar temple of kanchi. After defeating pallavas, vikramaditya pulikesi took both his queens to kanchipuram. They visited the kailasanathar temple and wanted to construct a similar one in their town. The treasures from kanchi were used to built the kailasanathar temple. There where 2 temple, names lokeshwara temple and trilokeshwara temple. Based on their wives names, lokamadevi (lokeshwara). One temple follows the Dravidian style vimana and the other one nagara style vimana.

B. N Jalihal

This place has a pallipadai kind of temple (resting place). The inscription here in this temple says its satyashriya and this looks like a mass graveyard. 2 Temples were found opposite to each other.

Gangas of kuvalalapura:original capital – kolar

One chola temple is found here. The main difference is, the main deity is made of stucco.

Gangas of talakadu

Chalukyas of kalyana – nagara style – kadamba nagara

The temples here follow a different style in nagara called the kathamba  nagara for vimana.

Cholas of Karnataka:

Then he started to speaking about the cholas of Karnataka.

He quoted the meikirthi of raja raja 1, where the victories of raja raja is mentioned,

Tamil inscription of raja raja1 – gangapadi , dadigaipadi, nulambapadi, kudamalai nadu

In which, gangapadi, dadigaipadi, nulambapadi belongs to Karnataka.

Battle field:

Battle kaliyuru:conquers of gangapadi

Gangapadi, was conquered after the battle at kaliyur. In this place they have found an inscription talking about the death of 18 chieftains, in the war. In present context, this place has herostones, in this region as clusters. Those herostones also are 18 in number. In literature reference, ottakuthar, in this book, “vikramacholan ula” says 18 chieftains were defeated in a war.

Archeological finding:

When he went for the research, he has found few bones in the nearby fields. He has given those to anthropological survey of India to find the time line. Surprisingly they were 1000 years old. So claims, that it proves to be an evidence of the war, 1000 years back.

Talakadu :

Tadimallangi – kaliyur – battle was fought

-          In this place, they found a royal temple and an agraharam, which was built as per the traditional planning concepts. He said, Siva temple – north east, Vishnu temple – south west in the traditional town planning concepts of india. In this town, there was a temple called,”Ravikula manikka vinnagaram” temple  which was destroyed.

Kolar temple:

Kolar temple found to be so interesting, because unlike tanjore and gkc, here the father and the son built temples next to each other. Rajaraja 1 built a temple, where the main deity was made in stucco. As it’s not possible for the people to do the rituals, rajendra built another temple, which resembles the earlier shrine. But the main deity is of stone here.

Malura patna: chola temple – raja raja 1

He said, this temple is very important, because the inscription found here says, the name of the god here is, arunmozhi deva iswaramudaiyur.

 There is another temple found here, which is called as, “narayanaswamy temple”, which is a  huge temple complex but in a very bad condition today.

Atakuru: ganga temple

Krishna – battle field

In this place, he showed a fort like structure holding the hero stones, as a proof for the battle that has happened here.

Marehalli – Vishnu temple

Satyashriya, named a Vishnu temple after his name in marehalli, as “Satyashriya vinnagaram”.

Agara – durgaiyar agaram – name of the village

He said, in the tanjore inscriptions, Raja raja1 has mentioned, “naam vaitha durgaiyar agaram “. For a longer period of time he couldn’t find out this durgaiyar agaram. Here in this agara, he showed a circular/smaller elliptical kind of a karuvarai, a temple for durga. After visiting this temple, he got answer for that inscription it seems. 

Battle field 2:

Kudamalai naadu

Mullur –3  jain temples

In mullur 3 jain temples were found, built by cholas. Inscriptions of cholas were found here. But those are not started with the king’s name, but with the chieftains’ name. the chieftains, were named as rajaraja kongalvan, rajendra kongalvan, rajathiraja kongalvan…… there was inscription saying “ rajendra  cholana thaye – pochevvarasi ” – but that doesn’t clearly denotes whether it talks about the chieftains or the king himself?   He also explained, we don’t come across this name “– pochevvarasi” in any of the inscriptions of chola, in Tamilnadu. In those 3 temples, one was built by the rajendra, another by the queen “– pochevvarasi”, but the builder of the 3^rd temple, was unknown.

Near the source of cauvery, the talaicauvery there is a temple of cholas, by raja raja 1. This follows the early temple style.

Soladevanhalli: this village now called as “solathana halli “

Here in this place, rajendra has built a iswaran temple, for his Mouna guru. This inscription was in the kannada language and now placed safely  in oriental manuscripts library After the death of his guru.

Rajathi raja -  temple inscription

In this place, we find another temple, by rajathi raja. This inscription talks about Gift of land. The temple looks like dormen. This temple was built in memory of a certain individual for the merit of his parents.

He told manimegalai talks about the chola kings and their victories.

Inscriptions in tanjore:

He explained how periya kovil was built. The treasures were from, Karnataka,the inscription goes like “Satyashiriyanai erinthu konduvantha” .  He explained that the temple was built from the war trophies, treasures from the war with Karnataka.

I felt the presentation was so much informative. With a lot of pictures and information on the inscriptions and history, it was a talk on a walk though of history of the state of Karnataka.