Millions arrive in Karnataka town to invoke Shiva

India
Millions arrive in Karnataka town to invoke Shiva
By Indo Asian News Service, Nov 22, 2006 - 3:23:02 PM

Talakad (Karnataka), Nov 22 (IANS) Millions of Hindus have descended on Talakad, a temple town situated on the banks of the river Cauvery, to pray to Lord Shiva on the millennium's first panchalinga darshan.

The 10-day festival, held once in every seven or 12 years in the five temples of Shiva at Talakad, 130 km from Bangalore, is considered auspicious during the current season (Krishnapaksha Amavasya) to help the devout attain 'moksha'.

Prayers, rituals and invocation of Shiva at the five temples - Vaidyanateshwara, Pathaleshwara, Maruleshwara, Arkeshwara and Mallikarjuna - began early Monday.

The riverbanks, dusty thoroughfares and bazaars in the pilgrim town are teeming with people. Makeshift shops and kiosks have come up to sell stuff ranging from clothes, utensils, footwear, provisions, toys, vegetables and food items.

The first family of the state, led by former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and Deputy Chief Minister Y.S. Yediyurappa visited the 10th century Vaidyanateshwara temple before other people were let into the sanctum sanctorum.

The pilgrim place in Mysore district where Muslim kings Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan lived shot into prominence during the early 17th century when the widow (Alamelamma) of Talakad chieftain Sri Rangaraya was believed to have 'cursed' the river and king Raja Wadiyar for denying her rights over the jewellery that adorned the Shiva idol in the main temple.

According to the legend, Alamelamma used to decorate the deity and that of his consort Parvathi with her own jewellery, including diamonds and gold ornaments, on important festivals and keep it in safe custody when not in use.

In 1610, when Rangaraya, who was also the custodian of the five temples, fell ill and died, Raja ordered Alamelamma to return the jewellery as it belonged to the Vaidyanateshwara temple and said the deity should be adorned all times.

The legend goes that when Alamelamma refused to part with the jewellery and ran away to the riverbank behind the temple, the king followed her and threatened her. Unable to bear the ignominy, she jumped into the river.

While drowning, she is believed to have cursed that the temple town would turn into a desert filled with sand, the nearby Malangi tributary would become a whirlpool and the Wadiyar dynasty would have no heir.

Coincidentally, in the last 400 years, large tracts on the riverbank and the temple town have been swamped by sand dunes. Even the five Shiva temples are not spared of the invading sand, submerging them by half in height.

Geo-technical engineer V.V.S. Rao told a news channel that archaeologists had to clear mounds of sand to excavate the temples in the mid-1950s only to find the area getting filled up with sand again every year.

'No scientific reason has been found for this unusual phenomenon. Geologists are yet to trace the origin of the sand and the clay in the shrinking riverbed. Strangely, there is no such sand on the other side of the river.'

Satellite pictures show the river has taken a bend, turning its course around the hills, 'a geological movement that must have begun maybe about 10,000 years ago', Rao said.

Historian Suryanath Kamath, however, maintains Alamelamma's curse is just a legend, because a dam, built by the Vijayanagar empire in the 14th century, may have changed the course of the river.

'Since then the earlier river bed dried up, turning into sand dunes over the centuries. It is the accumulated sand that keeps getting thrown up when the water flow in the river recedes,' Kamath pointed out.

In the case of the Wadiyar dynasty, which ruled the old Mysore region till independence, there have been no direct successors to the throne since then for reasons not yet known.

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