Navratri or otherwise, this Lakshmi temple has no rush of devotees: Doddagaddavalli

I did not know that Doddagaddavalli was the birth place of legendary Vina Vidwan Shri Doraiswamy Iyengar till that time I read the Swarajya article in 2020. It maybe that I had not paid any attention to his autobiographical profile before that, or maybe I was not aware of Doddagaddavalli when I used to listen to his music, in those old tapes. Like many others, my knowledge of Hoysala temples was limited to the Belur and Halebid, the ones I visited as a dreamy 18-years old college student. The horizon expanded a bit when I “discovered” Somanathapura a decade ago. It just engulfed me when I went on the Indica sponsored TSD rally three years ago. For months after that I got hold of whatever books, articles I could get about Hoysalas and their art. In January 2020 embarked on another visit to Belur, Halebid, Somanathapura and many of the smaller, lesser known Hoysala temples.

The study, the research and further visits took a backseat when the pandemic stuck. But that also was a period when I got to listen to many stalwarts in the area of art history and temple architecture like Manoj Gundanna, RH Kulkarni, that opened several vistas. I may or may not compile, write a book that I intended to do three years ago on Hoysala temples, but I knew that I wouldn’t rest till I had seen as many of their temples as I could, make it perhaps an annual pilgrimage to that small geographical area that was enriched by temples, Vaishnava, Saiva, Sakta and Jaina all existing, though not in their full glory hundreds of years after their creation.

In August this year I made it a point to take the family along to show what I had seen, what I am engrossed in … one of them was the Doddagaddavalli temple referred to as “abhinava Kolhapura” for the Lakshmi temple – there was an ancient Lakshmi temple at Kolhapur and this new Lakshmi temple therefore was called the new Kolhapur. It belongs to the period of one of Hoysala’s famous rulers, Vishnuvardhana, and an inscription dated 1113 CE states that “during the rule of the Hoysala king Vishnu the great merchant Kullahana Rahuta and his wife Sahajadevi founded the village Abhinava-Kolhapura and caused to be erected in it the temple of goddess Mahalakshmi”.

Doddagaddavalli is not far away from the bustling district headquarters of Hassan though a small village untouched by any modernity and the temple itself is on the banks of a large pond. It is a very well known temple by now, and unfortunately two years ago a tragic news of the breaking up of the kali vigraha shook all the astikas. Suspected vandalism was later explained by experts as a natural breaking up of the vigraha with no maintenance, upkeep happening at the temple. Unacceptable for any temple, and even more for such an unique and ancient temple like Doddagaddavalli, recorded as one of the earliest of the Hoysala temples.

While there are multiple eka kuta, that is temple with a single shikara or shrine, dwikuta and also very many beautiful trikuta temples, Doddagaddvalli is a rare chatushkuta temple, with four main shrines withing a single temple structure. The four shrines dedicated to Kali and Shiva, Lakshmi and Kesava today houses the damaged Kali vigraha, the Lakshmi vigraha, the Shiva shrine and the Keshava in the Vishnu shrine supposedly stolen decades ago replaced by a smaller Kalabhairava vigraha on a Garuda pedestal.

“Of the four cells, the Lakshmidevi and the Bhutanatha cells face each other; so also do the Vishnu and the Kali cells, only a greater interval. Each cell consists of a garbha-griha and a sukhanasi, and with the exception of the Lakshmidevi cell all have open sukhanasis. The three cells in the southern portion are attached to a common navaranga or middle hall. The garbha-griha and the sukhanis of these three cells have ceilings carved with lotuses. The lintel of the garbha-griha doorway of the Lakshmidevi cell has sculptured on it a figure of Tandavesvara, that of the Vishnu cell a figure of Yoga-Narasimha and that of the Bhutanatha cell a figure of Gajalakshmi.” – R Narasimhachar had written a monologue on the temple in 1919.

The inscription as well the noticeable ornamentation of the Lakshmi shrine alone, tells us why the temple finds mention as the Lakshmi temple though there have been debates about whether it should be a Kali temple and all that. RH Kulkarni says the sculpture of Lakshmi reminds usof the Kolhapur image in its style and features, standing in samabhanga, carring shanka, chakra, gada and padma. We said the Kali shrine is flanked on two sides by a scary vetal figure isn’t it, but see what picture Kulkarni paints of the Shakti seated inside the shrine – “Maha Kali’s strong frontal posture with her benign facial details makes the divine highly spiritual”. He says she had been worshipped as a village deity and the images around associate the shrine with tantric practices. In the photographs given here you can see the faces depicted on top of the doorway to the Kali shrine, for the bhuta figures there are “supposed to accompany the Devi in her expeditions against demons”.

Unfortunately, today there is neither a Shakta, Smarta or a Vaishnava priest there to conduct any pujas and it is a sad state of affairs as a “protected monument”.

Many a times we decry the fact that we do not know who built the temples, and we have a recent trend that does not want temples to be referred to by the historical dynasty timelines. In the case of Hoysala temples there have been copious engravings of the architect names on the temples, and some legends have come down through the ages of the well known about the architect/sculptors. One Malloja Maniyoja is mentioned as the architect who “was resplendent with the creative skill of Visvakarma” as the architect who built the Doddagaddavalli temple.

Overall size may be small, but imagine the structure of a four shrined main temple each with their own shikaras, kalashas, sukhanasis and the unmissable Hoysala symbol of the Sala slaying the lion and also the five subsidiary shrines that are bereft of any vigrahas inside now. The co-existence of the fierce Kali shrine flanked from outside by two gory vetal figures with the Lakshmi and Vishnu shrines should be a surprise, as to how it was conceived and what rituals the temple followed. What an interesting and unique temple and how would they have celebrated a Navratri? How well the temple and the villages were created during the Hoysala times, developed and sustained economically supporting the temples and the villages. Mark Doddagaddavalli as a must see next time you think of a trip out of Bangalore or Mysore, you would come back enriched. Much literature is available easily on the internet and many photos too. My tiny attempt here is just a way of sharing my experience and the few photographs I managed as the clouds threatened to come down heavily anytime. We escaped the rains, but the temple had not, for we could see the drops of water that has been seeping in, and wonder for how many monsoons it has been like that.