Stories around Lepakshi

 

A massive Bala Ganesha greet you as you enter. The deities Shiva and Vishnu face each other, while in the centre is Veerabhadra. I walk around and the Natyamantapa lures me . This is where the Gods make music .Brahma is on the cymbal, Narada on the tampura, and Shiva in his Nataraja avatar amongst other heavenly artists. Mesmerising us with their instruments, costumes and ornaments, they seem to create divine melodies .The sun�s rays touch the large sculptures in the unfinished Kalyanamantapa of the temple.

I am in this small village ,Lepakshi near Hindupur in Anantpur District looking at some of the rare mural paintings from Vijaynagar era that adorn this ancient 16^th century Veerabhadra temple. It is a late Saturday afternoon and surprisingly, there are no tourists. A large joint family has just walked in and the children have discovered their playground amidst the pillars. The sun plays hide and seek too and it looks like it will soon disappear amidst the clouds.

I sit beside one of the pillars and take in the scene. Unlike any tourist spot, there are no vendors or shops that besiege the tourist here. A guide offers his services and looking at his rather hopeful face, I decide not to disappoint him. And he plays rather to the gallery as the kids stop their games and listen to him as well.

�Le pakshi said Lord Rama to Jatayu, the bird asking it to get up ,� says the guide a bit dramatically narrating the episode from Ramayana .�Ravana had chopped off its wings and Lord Rama found the bird fallen right here in this village. Thats why its called Lepakshi. See this sculpture here..There are more stories,� his voice trails off.

The temple built in the Vijaynagar style has an inscription that says it was built by one Virupanna whose family deity was Veerabhadra. The temple ,renowned for the largest monolith Nandi stands a few metres away from the main temple complex- a testimony to the building skills of our ancient artisans. It is carved out of a single rock and towers to 20 feet high and is 30 feet long. A multi hooded Naga Linga stand opposite the Nandi in the main shrine . A group of children pose for a happy family photograph as I walk towards it.

Stories, myths and local lore resonate from almost every wall here . For instance the hill on which the temple is built is called Kurmasaila as it resembles a tortoise. The giant multihooded Naga Linga was said to have constructed out of a single boulder in such speed ; apparently even before the cook had finished cooking for the workers. But a crack soon appeared in the boulder that it looks like the sculpture is split in the middle, towards its base. � The sculptor�s mother was so taken in by her son�s work that she praised him, but her words only caused an evil eye and the crack appeared ,� says the guide , as I smile at the superstitious beliefs . The guide moves on to more legends. The unfinished Kalayanamandapam was built where Shiva and Parvati were believed to have got married. A large carved foot on the ground filled with water perennially is said to be Sita�s foot. � It is also said its Goddess Durga �s foot when she visited here ,� says the guide. He shows me the carved thali like plates on the ground.� The locals were fed here,� he says . It looks more like giant palettes to me .

Tales of devotion are depicted on the bass reliefs or on the murals that adorn the temple. Some of the finest specimens of Vijaynagar dynasty, the panels bring the Puranas alive as various forms of Shiva vie for attention. My guide narrates these stories of devotion etched and painted on the walls. There is Shiva as a mendicant testing the devotion of Sriyala and his parents by asking them to kill their only son and feed him. Pleased by their devotion, he restores their dead son back to them .Another mural depicts a just king , Manuchola who grants justice to a cow at the cost of his son�s life.

While the panels, the sculptures and the paintings narrate stories from the Puranas and the epics, the heart wrenching story of two red marks on the walls of the shrine tell a sad tale. Virupanna,a merchant and treasurer of the Vijaynagar emperor , Achutadevaraya decided to build a temple here when he found a sculpture of Veerabhadra here . He used the money from the treasury for the same when the king was away. The temple was almost completed , except for the kalyanamandapam ,when the king returned to find his treasury empty and the temple built without his permission. He ordered that Virupanna be blinded , but the merchant decided to punish himself by banging against the wall near the Kalyanamandapa .The two red marks are said to be his blood stains when the merchant gorged his own eyes out. The village is said to be called Lepa �akshi , meaning a village of the blinded eye. The melancholy is a bit addictive, then the beauty of the pillars take you away from the tragedy, the silence is mesmerising and the solitude seductive. � You can still see Virupanna�s ghost here.. the eyes bleed..� the guide�s voice trails, but I am lost in the world of myths and epics.

This article was published in Yahoo.com recently and an abridged version in my column, Inside Story in The Hindu.

Anegundi - relics from the past

A couple of langurs greet us as I listen to my guide Virupaksha gush about his hometown. � Anegundi is older than Hampi � in fact this is the mother kingdom .� Indeed, Anegundi  is ancient,with cave paintings of prehistoric man, it is the mythical Kishkinta of Ramayana , it is holy as the Pampa Sarovar flows here and it is historic with ruins of forts, palaces , temples and gateways hidden around  the boulders. But the most important aspect of Anegundi is that it is a lively settlement, with a charming village that opens its doors to most tourists who visit Hampi

A fisherman and his wife are busy making nets  near the Tallarighata gate, as we sip tea in a small shack, talking to some old women who are lost in the passage of time. �You will find another gate in Hampi as well, � says Virupaksha  and explains that these gates were used to collect tolls or taxes during the Vijaynagar dynasty from people entering from other kingdoms.

An auto driver decides to take us on a whirlwind tour of Anegundi . We see the village,  palace , the main entry gates and then climb up the old Durga fort listening to more stories . � The Vijaynagar kings used to come here and pray before every battle, �says Virupaksha , and then they go to the holy Pampa sarovar lake and the lakshmi temple there. �  We climb further to see  an ancient entrance to the fort, ruins of a palace and tombs .

But Anegundi is ageless  -  be it the settlements of prehistoric man or the myths around the Ramayana, there is a mysticism around it. � Kishkinta means a bush, a forest where monkeys lived, � explains Virupaksha, telling me about the Hanuman temple atop the Anjanadri Hill where tourists climb more than 400 steps to reach there.

As we lose ourselves in the green fields below bordered by the boulders, Virupaksha warns us that the last coracle would leave for Hampi soon. A few minutes later, sitting precariously on the rim of the coracle , carrying  two bikes and a dozen people , I cross the river Tungabhadra .  My thoughts get carried away to a passage in Robert Sewell's book , " A Forgotten Empire , which narrates the observations of a 16^th century Portuguese traveler , Dominoes Paes who had visited the empire.

 He mentions that the coracle was used even then to carry �� fifteen to twenty persons and even horses and oxen can cross in them if necessary . �Paes adds ,� People cross to this place by boats which are like baskets, inside they are made of cane and outside of leather�and the boats are always turning round, as they cannot go straight like others; in all the kingdoms where there are streams there are no other boats than these.�   It is interesting, I thought as we reached Hampi that a relic like the coracle lives along with the monuments from the Vijaynagar days.

This story was published today in Metro Plus in my column, The Inside Story 

The story of Hampi

Great civilizations and dynasties do not have a fairy tale beginning, for they are all founded on streams of blood . While Indian folklore is rich in heroic legends , a birth of a dynasty is replete with battles fought and won . It is the same with the Vijaynagar empire , except there are several stories here with various versions. But the location remains the same. A river bed with a fortification on one bank . This was the principality of Anegundi, ruled then by a Hoysala chieftain. When the Delhi Sultans  laid siege to the Hoysalas and Kakatiyas, the latter fell, leaving South India vulnerable to their attacks. Our story begins here in the 14^th century.

Sitting in a coracle and  enjoying the ride around the Tungabhadra  I heard a guide narrate the story of Vijaynagar  to a group of tourists .�When the Delhi Sultans had invaded Warangal, two brothers called Hakka or Harihara  and Bukka escaped  and landed here in Anegundi,� he says , pointing to the town on the other side of the river. The brothers who were under the Kakatiyas then started serving the local chief here . Meanwhile the chief gave refuge to Bahauddin, a rebel nephew of the Delhi Sultan , Muhammad Bin Tughlaq.

�The Sultan plundered Anegundi and the brothers escaped again, and this is when they met Vidyaranya , a seer from the Sringeri Shankaracharya Mutt who asked them to build a city on the other bank of the river .He called it Vijaynagar or the city of victory though we also call it Vidyanagar after the seer, � the guide said. The story however does not end here. The brothers raised a small army and revolted against the Sultan, who returned the kingdom to them. The seeds of the Vijayanagar empire which went on to rule all of South India for over 350 years had just been sown.

And yet everything about Hampi is not about Vijaynagar. Gazing at the waters of the Tungabhadra, I was looking forward to going towards the Pampa Sarovar on the other side. After all, Pampa is older than Hampi or Hampe as it was called and this was the Kishkinta of Ramayana where Rama gets the support of Sugriva and Hanuman and even kills Vaali. It is no wonder that Jambhavan , the lone sloth bear in Sugriva�s army comes alive in Daroji, the sloth bear sanctuary located close to Hampi.

As dusk dawned in Vittala temple , I was lost in the silence , when a familiar voice greeted me. It was the guide and his lot of tourists. As I walked away , I could hear him say, � This is the greatest empire of all times, people compare it with Rome , but let me tell you that Vijaynagar is even more majestic than Rome .�  I thought this is probably where  civilizations and empires meet � on battlefields.  And yet there is a similarity in the stories - one river and two brothers�

The story was published in my column, Inside Story in The Hindu

Trails in Andhra Pradesh

Lepakshi

We visited several temples in 2008 and I have posted most of them. Some like Shibi, Madurai Meenakshi temple are yet to be posted. However coming back to the trails - the last legs of my 2008 heritage trails were in Andhra Pradesh..Two different dynasties this time and neither of them complete though - the Vijaynagar in Lepakshi and Kakatiya in Warangal and around.Im leaving you with two collages, one of Lepakshi and the other of the old Warangal Fort..Lepakshi was a day trip from Bangalore while Warangal was an overnight trip from Hyderabad. We covered a lot of places enroute to Warangal and then travelled onwards to Palampet. I missed Bhongir as it had become dark, but I hope to get there again sometime..Some of my stories on these destinations have been published recently.

Warangal Fort

I hope you liked the collages from all three posts from all three states - Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Let me know which one you liked the best ( you could even choose any one collage ) and I would be glad to help if you plan to follow any of these trails in 2009.