Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

SR No.: 001609
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 566
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Story, Literature, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

Page 515

494
YAŠASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
Somanātha, the Somanātha of the South', at Purikara (Puligere, the modern Lakshmeshwar), (all in the Dharwar district), is referred to in several inscriptions belonging to the first half of the twelfth century A. D.' Further, an inscription of the reign of Soyi Deva, the son of Bijjala, records endowments made in 1172 A. D. for the temples of Siva-Somanātha (RāyaMuräri-Somanātha) and Bijjeśvara at Mālige (Mādagihāl in Jat State, near Bijapur).
Apart from inscriptional evidence, there exists a large number of surviving specimens of later Cālukyan Saiva temples, ranging from the tenth century to the end of the twelfth, mostly in the Dharwar district and the immediate neighbourhood. In fact, it will be no exaggeration to say that later Cālukyan architecture was almost entirely devoted to the glorification of the Saiva faith. The advent of the later Cālukyas under Taila II, towards the end of the tenth century, gave a fresh impetus to temple building; and it is from this time that we notice a gradual transformation of the earlier Dravidian style, till what is known as the Cālukyan style came into existence. In the first place, the earlier building material, the rougher grained sandstone, was abandoned in favour of the more compact, tractable, and finer grained black stone known as chloritic schist, which dresses down to a much finer surface, and has enabled the sculptors to produce so much of that beautiful, delicate, lacelike tracery which characterises the låter work. In the second place, there was a diminution in the size of the masonry, the heavy cyclopean blocks of the early temples being discarded in favour of much smaller ones. Finally, the storied or horizontal arrangement of the towers, a prominent characteristic of the Dravidian style found in the early temples, became obliterated by a great profusion of ornamental detail, and underwent a process of approximation to the vertical bands up the centre of each face of the Northern tower. The transition from the earlier to this later style, evolved about the tenth and eleventh centuries, is seen in the Saiva temple of Kalleśvara at Kukkanūr* and the Jaina temple at Lakkundi'; while that of Kāśivisvešvara at the latter place shows a further marked development of the Cālukyan tower. On a beam in the hall of the latter building is an inscription, dated in the thirteenth year of the reign of the later Cālukya king Vikramāditya VI, which corresponds to 1087 A. D.® One of the finest of existing Cālukyan temples probably the finest temple in the Kanarese districts, after Halebid, is that of Mahadeva in the small village of Ittagi, in the Nizam's territory, about twenty-two miles due east of Gadag in the Dharwar district. It measures, over all, 120 feet by 66 feet,' and consists of a shrine, with its antechamber, a closed and a great open hall at the east end, which was originally supported upon sixtyeight pillars. The temple is mentioned in
sed in the tbhich correspos the finest tion, Jaaditya Vhi temples PMahadev
1 Ibid. Three Inscriptions of Lakshmeshwar by L. D. Barnett. 2 Ibid. Vol. XV, p. 317. 3 See Cousens (op. cit., p. 74 ff. 4 A village in the Nizam's territory, at a short distance across the border from Gading
in the Dharwar district. 5 Now a small village near Gadag. 6 Cousens (op. cit.), p. 79.