01Ganga, Chola, Hoysala
Talakad, Talavanapura in the inscriptions, was the capital of the Western Gangas, who ruled southern Karnataka for some six centuries. Around 1004 Rajaraja Chola’s army under his son Rajendra took it and renamed it Rajarajapura. In 1116 the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana, with his general Gangaraja, drove the Cholas out and took the title Talakadugonda, ‘conqueror of Talakad’. To mark it he built the Kirtinarayana temple here, and the next year the great temple at Belur. The Vaidyeshvara temple, with its carved walls and a stone chain cut from one block, is the finest that stands above the sand.
02Sand and the Panchalinga
Over the centuries sand dunes moved in from the river bed and buried most of the town, temples and all. Local tradition blames a curse: Alamelamma, wife of the Vijayanagara viceroy at Srirangapatna, fleeing Raja Wodeyar’s men around 1610, threw her jewels into the Kaveri, cursed Talakad to become sand and the Mysore kings to lack heirs, and drowned herself. Five lingas, Vaidyeshvara, Arkeshvara, Pataleshvara, Maraleshvara and Mallikarjuna, are worshipped together in the Panchalinga Darshana, held in the month of Kartika when a rare conjunction of the new moon and the Vishakha nakshatra falls, about once in twelve years. The sand is then cleared from the buried shrines.
The life of this place
- c. 1004The Cholas take Talakad and rename it Rajarajapura.
- 1116Vishnuvardhana recovers Talakad and builds the Kirtinarayana temple.
- c. 1610 (tradition)Alamelamma’s curse on Talakad, as the local tradition tells it.
About 45 km south-east of Mysuru. Walk barefoot over the dunes between the temples; avoid noon.
