Aihole

01Ravikirti’s verses

On the wall of the Jain Meguti temple is a Sanskrit prashasti by the poet Ravikirti. It is dated twice: 3,735 years after the Bharata war and 556 years of the Shaka kings, that is 634 CE, which makes it one of the oldest records to count from the Mahabharata war. It sings the Chalukya line and the deeds of Pulakeshin II, above all his stopping of Harsha, lord of the north, whose joy, the poet says, melted away when his elephants fell in battle. Ravikirti closes by claiming a place beside Kalidasa and Bharavi, the earliest dated mention of both poets.

02Workshop of the temple

Aihole’s temples show the builders thinking aloud. The Lad Khan temple, named after a man who once lived in it, is a flat-roofed hall like a village assembly house. The Ravanaphadi cave of the 6th century has Shiva dancing among the Saptamatrikas. The Durga temple, named for the durga or fort that once ringed it rather than for the Devi, has an apsidal plan with a pillared walk all round and a curved northern tower on top. Aihole was also the home of the Ayyavole Five Hundred, a merchant guild whose members traded from the Deccan to Southeast Asia. The ASI keeps most of the temples in a few walled compounds in the village.

The life of this place