Male Mahadeshwara

Male Mahadeshwara, affectionately Madappa, is the god of the Male Mahadeshwara Hills, a range of forested uplands in Chamarajanagar district near Karnataka's border with Tamil Nadu. In tradition he was a wandering ascetic, placed by most tellings around the fifteenth century, who came to these hills, worked wonders among the herders and forest peoples, and came to be worshipped as a living form of Shiva. His shrine on the hilltop, where a linga is venerated, is the centre of one of the strongest folk cults of the Kannada country.

The tradition

The saint is remembered above all as the rider of a tiger, and the huli, the tiger mount, is his emblem. His deeds are preserved in a long oral epic sung by hereditary devotee-performers to the beat of the kamsale, a pair of bronze cymbals; the kamsale song-and-dance tradition remains one of the distinctive performing arts of southern Karnataka. The epic recounts his contests with hostile chiefs and sorcerers of the hills and his miracles on behalf of the poor, and singing it is itself an act of devotion.

Worship

Pilgrims walk or ride up to the temple throughout the year, with the largest crowds at the fairs held on Shivaratri and other festival days, when lakhs of devotees from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu converge on the hills. Vows are common: pilgrims carry offerings up the slopes, and many households in the region keep Madappa as their family deity. The seventy-seven hills of his domain, thick with forest and wildlife, are themselves treated as sacred ground.