01The student who took up the sword
The inscription, composed in fine Sanskrit verse by the poet Kubja in the reign of the Kadamba king Shantivarma, begins with the family of Brahmins of Talagunda who kept the sacred fires. One of them, Mayurasharma, went with his guru to Kanchi, the Pallava capital, to study the Vedas at its ghatika. There a quarrel with a Pallava horseman left him humiliated. He gave up the kusha grass and the ladle of sacrifice, took up the sword, gathered men in the forests near Shriparvata, and fought the Pallavas until they recognised him as king. So the Kadambas began, the first royal house of the Kannada country.
02Pranaveshvara and the tank
The pillar stands before the temple of Pranaveshvara, Shiva as the lord of Om, to whom the Kadamba kings made gifts. The inscription records that Kakusthavarma, one of Mayurasharma’s line, had a great tank dug here for the temple. Talagunda was an agrahara, a village of learned Brahmins supported by royal grants. The present temple is of later rebuilding, but the pillar still stands in its old place before it.
The life of this place
- c. 345 CEMayurasharma founded the Kadamba kingdom, as the pillar later recorded.
- c. 455–470 CEThe Talagunda pillar inscription was cut in the reign of Shantivarma.
Talagunda is near Shiralakoppa in Shikaripura taluk, about 80 km from Shivamogga; Banavasi, the Kadamba capital, is within an easy drive.
