The image
The figure stands about seventeen metres high, cut from a single mass of granite on the summit of Vindhyagiri hill. Bahubali is shown upright in the kayotsarga posture, arms hanging free of the body, unclothed, with creepers twining up his legs and arms and anthills at his feet — the iconographic detail that records his years of motionless meditation.
The face is calm and slightly smiling, the modelling restrained, and the whole is carved with the sharp definition granite permits and the simplicity its hardness enforces. There is no supporting structure: the figure is free-standing, which at that scale in that material is the achievement.
Patronage
It was raised in about 981 CE by Chavundaraya, minister and general to the Western Ganga king Rachamalla, and the tradition preserves accounts of his mother's vow as the occasion. Inscriptions at the base record the commission in Kannada, Tamil and Marathi.
Afterlife
The image established a type. Later Digambara patrons raised comparable colossi at Karkala in 1432, Venur in 1604 and Dharmasthala in 1973, all following the same posture and iconography at smaller scale. The Shravanabelagola figure remains the largest and the object of the twelve-yearly anointing that is the tradition's most public ceremony.
Further reading
- Cort, John E. Jains in the World. Oxford University Press, 2001
- Dundas, Paul. The Jains. Routledge, 2002
- Folkert, Kendall W. Scripture and Community: Collected Essays on the Jains. Scholars Press, 1993
- Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Motilal Banarsidass, 1979
- Long, Jeffery D. Jainism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris, 2009
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.