The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c28.s2: Temple of Tripurāntaka
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c28.s2
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Temple of Tripurāntaka
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In another temple, that of Tripurāntaka, which is very much ruined, towards the north-east side of the village, is some very good perforated stonework in the form of windows and screens. The two sides of the shrine doorway have most remarkable panels. They are each filled with three pairs of Nāga figures, whose long serpentine extremities are so intertwined and knotted as to fill up the panels, leaving as lights the interstices between the coils of the tails and the bodies (Plate CXV). Above the doorway is an elaborate architrave bearing the images of Brahmā, Śiva and Viṣṇu, with the dikpālas and a host of minor deities surrounding them. Śiva is here represented in his Bhairava form. In the same hall, upon the north side, is a pair of windows similar in design to the panels on either side of the east doorway at Unkal. In a narrow band of bas-reliefs, round the exterior of the temple, are a series of most obscene pairs of figures, which are not often found upon Chālukyan temples. As a rule they are confined to very small figures, and are only discovered upon a close inspection of the walls. The larger sculptures seldom ever contain such work.
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A new feature in this temple is the large sculptures around the basement. The upper edge and the lower course of the base project, and held in between these by mortices and tenons, at intervals, are large slabs bearing groups of figure sculpture. Most of these have been removed, and some still lie about the place uncared for. Of two of these which are
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Fig 31.—Slab bearing the Hoysaḷa sculpture, Baḷagāmve.
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illustrated one (Fig. 31) is a representation of the Hoysaḷa king slaying the lion, somewhat similar to the group on the tower of the temple of Kēdārēśvara, and which appears to have been a very favourite subject with these southern sculptors. The story, as given upon this stone, is not quite the same as that given in the Gadag inscription. From the slab we can gather that the king, when out hunting with his dogs, speared a wild boar and brought it to earth. At the same moment a lion—not a tiger, for it has a full flowing mane—sprang out of the jungle to seize it, when the king attacked the lion single-handed and on foot. In the small figure on horseback we see the king setting out for the chase. This, with the elephant on the other side, to indicate the jungle, is only thrown in to fill up the corners of the slab. Beneath the lion is the wounded boar, with the spear or sword cut shewn on its flank, the dogs having left it to worry the lion. There is no ascetic in this group, nor is there in the groups upon the towers of the temple here and at Raṭṭihaḷḷi. A second smaller figure is introduced into the larger groups, but it is of an armed attendant, merely put in as a prop to the lion.¹
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¹ Wild boar hunting was a favourite pastime. An inscription upon a *viragal* at Baḷagāmve records the death of a certain individual while following the boar, and a copper plate grant tells us that Govinda III., of the Rāshṭrakūṭas, had good sport with wild boars at the Rāmēśvara *tīrtha*
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Lying upon a mound, on the east of the village, are the remains of a colossal image of a Jina, which must have stood eleven or twelve feet high. The trunk lies beside the feet, which are standing upright. About the village are other Jaina figures and Jaina inscription slabs. In the centre of the village stands a tall Gaṇḍabhēruṇḍa column which is described further on with miscellaneous objects. It is not at present connected with any temple (Fig. 32).
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The earliest temple of which mention is made in the inscriptions, is that of the Pañcha-Liṅga which is said to have been erected by the Pañch Paṇḍavas when they visited the place. The ruins of a Pañcha-Liṅga or ‘Five-Liṅga’ temple still exist, which may be a successor to an earlier one. It seems to have been adorned with some fine sculpture.
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The temple of Dakṣiṇa-Kēdārēśvara was probably built about the end of the eleventh century, just before which, a Jaina temple had been put up (in A.D. 1068). The completion of the maṇḍapa was still in hand in A.D. 1200, unless this was some repair. Inscriptions recording grants to the temple extend from A.D. 1103 to 1193. In an inscription of A.D. 1065 mention is made of the building of a Buddha vihāra, when provision was made for it together with the gods Kēśava, Lōkēśvara and Buddha. Two years after this a Buddhist image of Tārā-Bhagavatī was set up. Attached to the temple of Kēdārēśvara was the Kōḍiya maṭha, a kind of college which was not only a celebrated seat of learning but was also a centre for the dispensing of medicines to all manner of sick persons, and, like the mediæval monasteries in Europe, for the distribution of food to the destitute and mendicant of all classes and sects.¹
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¹ See Rice's *Epigraphia Carnatica*, Vol. VII
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Fig. 32.—Image on the top of the Gaṇḍabhēruṇḍa column, Baḷagāmve.
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There are upwards of eighty inscriptions at Baḷagāmve which tell us of the building of temples and the granting of money and lands for their upkeep; they also record the meritorious deaths of heroes and fanatical suicides. They are Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Jaina and Buddhist. The earliest known inscription here is one of the time of Vinayāditya Chālukya, which is interesting as being the earliest known stone record in Western India that has an emblem sculptured upon it—that of an elephant.