Shravanabelagola

The two hills

The town lies between two granite hills. Vindhyagiri, the larger, carries the seventeen-metre monolith of Bahubali at the top of some six hundred rock-cut steps. Chandragiri, the smaller, holds a cluster of small temples of the Ganga and Hoysala periods and the cave associated in tradition with Bhadrabahu and Chandragupta Maurya. Between them lies the tank, the belgola or white pond, that gives the place its name.

The inscriptions

More than five hundred inscriptions are cut into the rock of the two hills, in Kannada, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Marathi and Tamil, and ranging from about the seventh century to the nineteenth. They record grants, deaths by sallekhana, the raising of images and the succession of mendicant teachers.

Collectively they are the single most important documentary source for Digambara Jainism in the Deccan, and they carry political information as well, since the donors include Ganga, Rashtrakuta, Hoysala and Vijayanagara figures. Their publication in the Epigraphia Carnatica made the site central to the modern historiography of southern Jainism.

Status

Shravanabelagola remains an active centre with a resident mendicant community and a matha headed by a line of teachers. The twelve-yearly Mahamastakabhisheka, when the Bahubali image is anointed from scaffolding, is the largest gathering in the Jain calendar and draws hundreds of thousands.