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John E. Cort, The Goddesses of Sravana Belgola
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Kuşmāndinī, not surprisingly, since she is the guardian of the sacred site, is also present atop Vindhyagiri, the hill topped by the Bāhubali icon. She is not a very prominent presence, however. Her icon is located in a cell among a number of other cells with icons of Jinas in the pavilion that runs behind the Bāhubali icon (Plate 30.3). While this icon is worshiped daily, on most days she is ornamented much more simply than the other important goddess icons at Sravana Belgola, with just a long garland of red and white flowers around her neck.
The third important and popular icon of Kusmāndinī is atop Candragiri. Compared to the steady stream of pilgrims up Vindhyagiri to worship the icon of Bahubali, a much smaller number of people climb Candragiri, even though this hill is covered with temples, and is the older of the two sacred hills. Only a few icons in the more than one dozen medieval temples receive much active worship. Pilgrims who climb this hill tend to take a quick darśana of the many Jina icons. The people who linger to read the many signs posted by the Archaeological Survey of India, and to inspect the architecturally and iconographically important structures, are acting as much as tourists as they are pilgrims. Their gaze is as much a secular and historical one as it is religious. Many of the people who engage in this historical viewing of Candragiri may pay very little attention to two cells on the veranda of the largest temple on the hill, the Kattale Basati, or "dark temple", so called because the lack of windows renders it very dark inside. This temple, with its main icon of the Jina Adinātha, was built in 1118 A.D. by Gangarāja, a minister of the Hoysala king Visnuvardhana, in honor of his own mother Pocikabbe, and renovated in the mid-nineteenth century by two women of the Mysore royal family. While the icon of Ādinātha is, in the words of one author (Nagaraj 1981, 16), “a fine piece of Hoysala art,” it is not the main focus of worshipers. They come instead to view and worship the icon of Padmāvati, and her devotional centrality has lent this temple its second name, Padmāvati Basati.? The attentive pilgrim or tourist will note that her icon, as well as the icon of Kuşmāņdinī in a nearby cell, and an icon of the male protector deity Ksetrapāla in a third cell, give evidence of frequent worship. Their icons are ornamented, the smell of incense is in the air, and offerings are on the low tables at the entrances to the cells. Each goddess cell also has a rod rurining from wall to wall across the width of its inside, on which dozens of women devotees have left glass bangles, in response to a petition that has been successfully answered. Of the two goddesses, Padmāvati is more popular here, as seen in her more
Information on the temples on Candragiri comes from del Bonta (1981), Karnataka (1981), Nagaraj (1980), Nagarajaiah (2001), Sangave (1981), and Settar (1981). 7 Note that the two goddesses here are Padmāvati and Kuşmāndini, the attendant goddesses of the Jinas Pārsvanātha and Neminātha respectively. Cakreśvarī, the goddess who attends upon Adinātha, is not important either at this temple or elsewhere at Sravana Belgola (she is much more important in north Indian Svetāmbara Jain ritual culture; Settar (1971b), Shah (1971)), showing again how the cults of the goddesses in southern Digambara Jainism are to a significant extent independent of the Jinas.
