The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c12.s1: The Navalinga Temple
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c12.s1
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The Navalinga Temple
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T HE village of Kukkanūr is in H. E. H. the Nizām's territory, at a short distance across the border from Gadag in the Dhārwār district, and four miles north of Ittagi. In the middle of the town is a high-walled enclosure containing temples of different periods. The largest one, that of Mahāmayī, which occupies the centre of the court-yard, and is now the principal shrine of the group, has been so patched up and encrusted with whitewash that, from without, it is difficult to make much out of it. The nucleus, around which the rest has grown, appears to be of the same age as the walls and gateways of the enclosure, probably of the Vijayanagar period, and so comparatively late.
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About ten yards to the west of this temple is a group of far older shrines of much more interest to the antiquarian (Plates LVII—LIX). It is a cluster of nine shrines, arranged in no very definite order, known as the Navaliṅga or ‘Nine Liṅgas’, the arrangement being best seen on the accompanying plan (Plate LV). There are four halls attached to one another, three of them being in a line from east to west with small shrines off them. Each shrine contains a liṅga, and each is surmounted by its own śikhara or spire. It needs but a glance at the plan to see that this collection of shrines and halls is not the result of a premeditated design or it would have been more symmetrical. They were probably Vaiṣṇava, and Gaja-Lakṣmī holds the place of honour over every doorway. Above the antechamber to one shrine is a very perfect and well-carved architrave with the usual makaras with florid tails. In this instance, and it is very unusual, the makaras are covered with circular scales (Fig. 23).
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Fig. 23.—Architrave from the Navaliṅga temple, Kukkanūr.
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The disintegration of the walls gives these buildings an air of greater age than the Paṭṭadakal temples, but this may be due to a poorer quality of stone used. They have been overlaid with a wealth of decorative detail—rich embroideries in stone.
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The pillars are a great advance upon those at Paṭṭadakal. The four central ones, as seen in Plate LVI, with their great flat slab capitals, show the beginning of the later Cālukyan pillars.
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The shrines are very much closed in by huts and houses which crowd in upon them, their walls being in great part embedded in the mud walls of their surroundings. Within the temple are two inscription slabs, one much surface-worn, and there is another at an outer corner of one of the shrines.
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There is another old temple of the same style as the Navaliṅga to the north of it, but it is built around and is not cared for, its outer walls being used to dry cowdung cakes upon. There are three old well-preserved inscribed slabs inside it. To the north-west of this is a large tank, on the south margin of which are two small shrines facing one another. They, too, are old, but are not of much account. Between them a flight of steps leads down to the water's edge.
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At least, fifteen old inscriptions are to be found at Kukkanūr which vary in date from A.D. 1005 to 1186, together with some few Vijayanagar ones. They all record grants of land and villages to the different temples there, most being granted to that of Mallikārjuna. One is to the goddess Gaṅgā; another is to Kāḷikādēvi in the temple of Mahāmayī in 1178, and another is to Sarasvati. Yet one more is to the goddess Chāmuṇḍi. Considering the number of goddesses mentioned in these inscriptions, it is possible that the Navaliṅga shrines originally contained images of them.