HARADANAHALLI IS A FORGOTTEN VILLAGE located six kilometres from Chamarajanagara. It is an hour’s drive from Mysore and three from Bangalore. Even a century ago, it was renowned for its Divya-Lingeshvara Temple. Today, it is known for…nothing.
But Haradanahalli has a truly distinguished past. It was one of the major principalities of the Hoysala Empire and formed an integral part of the Eeṇṇe-nāḍu (literally, Land of Oil), which corresponds to today’s Chamarajanagara District.
Haradanahalli had also earned distinction of a different sort.
In 1316, Mara Gauda Dandanayaka — a commander of Hoysala monarch Vira Ballala III — commissioned the construction of the aforementioned temple.
Its original name is Divyalinga Analeshwara — meaning, it is an Agni-Linga. Over the centuries, Haradanahalli became a fabled Kshetra - - a place of pilgrimage. Monarchs and masses flocked to the temple from both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and made wealthy endowments. True to its founding charter of Hindu Dharma Punarutthana, the Vijayanagara monarchs vastly developed this temple and added new Murtis to it. The Nayakas and Wodeyars who succeeded Vijayanagara upheld this sacred tradition. The legendary Krishnaraja Wodeyar III too, embellished this temple with various paintings and murals narrating different stories from our epics and Puranas. In 1787, Tipu Sultan, the tyrant of Mysore, plundered it and carried its entire wealth to his ill-gotten treasury in Srirangapattana.
OUR STORY is set in the year 1580 when large parts of the Mysore region were ruled by the Keladi (or Ikkeri) Nayakas for a brief period. The current ruler was Rama Raja Nayaka.
This rather delightful story is narrated by an inscription discovered (sometime in the late 19th century) on a stone inside the compound of the Gaurisvara Temple in Yelandur, which is about 20 Kms from Haradanahalli.
That year, a wedding had been fixed in the family of a potter who lived in Yelandur. The bride and the groom had to naturally look their best. Accordingly, the family approached a barber and a washerman; the barber was tasked with paring toe nails; the washerman, with washing the clothes so that they looked brand new.
But both professionals refused on the grounds that potters (kumbāra-seṭṭi) were forbidden from cutting nails and wearing an upper garment. The matter went to the leaders of the respective communities. The chief of the potter community retorted that the barbers and washermen were ignorant of the rules governing their community — they indeed had the right to cut their nails and wear upper garments.
The case was finally placed before Rama Raja Nayaka himself who resorted to a time-honoured method of resolving it. He ordered a Ghrta-Divya or the Ordeal by Ghee. Accordingly, the disputing parties were made to stand before the deity of Divya-Lingesvara in Haradanahalli. A large pot filled with boiling ghee was placed before the potters and they were ordered to place their hands inside it for a specified duration. If they experienced no harm, the case would be decided in their favour. And that’s what exactly happened. The potters won the case.
Thereupon, Rama Raja Nayaka issued the following order:
"kuṃbhārarige kāluguru tegauṇa melkaṭṭu kaṭṭuṇa endu barada śāsana |
Thus it is ordered — For the potters, the toe-nails may be pared and the upper cloth may be tied on. "
The names of the barbers and washermen are mentioned: Chama, Amsamana, Honna, Dhuma and Chanda; however, the inscription does not mention which of these were barbers and which were washermen.
The toe nails of the potter couple were pared and the upper garment was worn and the wedding was duly celebrated.
THE NOTABLE ELEMENT in this episode is the method of jurisprudence. The system of employing Divyas — or ordeals — to decide legal disputes dates back almost to the dawn of the Hindu civilisation. Research shows that Divyas were in vogue in many parts of India even in the 1960s but that’s a topic for another day. What gave the stamp of finality to Divyas was the fact that they were carried out in a sacred spot — in a temple, before a Tulsi plant, on a Nagarakatte (a stone podium consecrated with many Murtis of the Naga-Devata), on the banks of a river, etc.
There is a tragic, contemporary epilogue to this story.
In 2005, the Divya-Lingesvara Temple’s original five-tiered Gopuram crashed down and shattered into pieces under the assault of severe rainfall. This is the present condition of this once-magnificent Mandir:
The 42-feet-high Garuda-Kambha lies in pieces in front of the temple ground. Rainwater floods the Ranga Mantapa inside and water drips into the temple at many places. A room in the Ranga Mantapa is being used as a storehouse of wooden blocks…. The fate of the images is no better…The ceiling of the pavilion in front of each shrine has beautiful murals, which have partially survived but are threatened by the dampness of the ceiling and walls. At one or two places, the entire painting has disappeared, barely leaving any trace.
Needless, this temple is in the deathly thrall of the Muzrai — the Karnataka equivalent of the venomous HR & CE — department.
As I always say, Hindus have perfected the art of committing civilisational suicide with their eyes wide open.
|| Oṃ Divya Lingeśvarāya Namaḥ ||
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