Lepakshi

The founders

The temple was built by two brothers, Virupanna and Viranna, who served the emperor Achyuta Deva Raya (r. 1529–1542) as governors at Penukonda. Their inscriptions record its endowment. A local story says that Virupanna spent royal money on it without permission and was punished by being blinded, and two dark marks on a wall are pointed out as the stains of his eyes. The story is a legend; nothing in the inscriptions supports it.

Another tradition links the place with the Ramayana: the bird Jatayu, wounded by Ravana, is said to have fallen here, and Rama to have told him to rise, "le pakshi", giving the village its name. The story is a folk etymology.

The temple

The temple stands on a low granite outcrop called Kurmasaila, the tortoise hill. It has two enclosures. The inner one contains the shrine of Virabhadra, a fierce form of Shiva created from his anger at Daksha's sacrifice, with subsidiary shrines to Vishnu and Shiva, and a large hall for dance and music whose pillars are carved with musicians, dancers and deities. Behind the shrine is an unfinished wedding hall, the Kalyana Mandapa, whose carved columns stand without a roof, and a great linga sheltered by a seven-headed serpent carved from a single boulder.

One pillar in the dance hall does not rest fully on the floor, and visitors pass a cloth beneath it. The usual explanation is that it shifted during an attempt in the colonial period to discover how the building was supported. About 200 metres from the temple is a monolithic Nandi, the bull of Shiva, among the largest in India, carved from a single block and facing the serpent linga.

The paintings

The ceilings of the halls carry the most extensive group of Vijayanagara paintings that survives. They are painted in mineral colours on a thin lime surface and show stories from the epics and Puranas: Shiva's marriage, the Kiratarjuniya episode in which Arjuna fights Shiva disguised as a hunter, scenes of Krishna, and the donors and their families at worship. The figures are drawn in profile with strong outlines, dressed in the costumes and textiles of the sixteenth-century court, which makes them a source for the dress of the period as well as its art. One painting of Virabhadra is among the largest single ceiling paintings in India.

Afterwards

After the fall of Vijayanagara the temple lost its patrons but continued in worship. Its paintings suffered from damp, soot and later whitewash. The Archaeological Survey of India protects the site, and the paintings have been studied and partly conserved.