Credit: Special Arrangement
One might easily mistake Lakkundi for just another typical village in northern Karnataka. But beyond the modest houses, roadside shops, and eateries, lies a landscape scattered with clues to a far more illustrious past.
Suspicious-looking mounds stick up here and there, and stretches of what must once have been massive fortification walls still survive – hulking masses of boulders set in mud mortar, with the odd opening yawning in the crumbling masonry.
There are several sprawling water bodies. There is no doubt that these reservoirs charge the aquifers that feed the several stepwells which dot the town. Apart from the well-known temples and stepwells harking to the period of Kalyani Chalukya rule in the region, there are several monuments in various states of disrepair.
Hunches about a glorious past for Lakkundi are not unfounded. For Lokkigundi, as Lakkundi was once known, was a thriving centre of trade and political power, and a hive of temple-building and innovations during the 9th to 14th centuries CE.
The Karnata Dravida tradition of temple-building in stone began in Badami during the rule of the Badami Chalukyas (6th to 8th centuries CE). Over the following centuries, this tradition evolved through conscious experimentation, eventually giving rise to a markedly different architectural style during the 11th and 12th centuries CE, under the patronage of the Kalyani Chalukyas. Lakkundi emerged as an important centre of this architectural innovation.
Architectural historian Adam Hardy sees two distinct schools of temple-building during this period – the Lakkundi school and the Sudi school.
The Lakkundi school adapted to a new material of construction – the closer-grained chloritic schist, over the sandstone which was favoured earlier, more readily than its Sudi counterpart. This permitted detailed carving at smaller scales, thus setting the stage for the architectural and sculptural exuberance to follow.
Legend has it that there were 101 temples in Lakkundi and a similar number of stepwells. Today, one can spot the remains of around fifty temples and eleven stepwells. However, it is quite conceivable that other remnants might be hiding under the soil of centuries. Eight temples are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India, and some more by the Department of Archaeology and Museums of the state government, but many are unprotected, slowly succumbing to the relentless forces of decay and dilapidation.
The Jaina Basadi, locally known as Brahma Jinalaya, because of the exquisitely sculpted image of Brahma Yaksha flanking the entry to the sanctum, is one of the earliest monuments in the village. The exterior modulation of the Nanneshwara temple shows some of the innovations that the experiments in temple form had produced. However, it is the stupendous dvikuta, called Kashi Vishveshwara, with twin shrines dedicated to Shiva and Surya, which shows the considerable evolution that temple form underwent in the later Karnata Dravida tradition. The Muskina Bavi – a beautifully crafted stepwell, with the Manikeshwara temple situated adjacent to it – is another marvellous sight for temple aficionados.
The Lakkundi school constructed monuments beyond the village, too. The vastly different Doddabasappa temple at nearby Dambala village, is an ingenious adaptation of Karnata Dravida design principles to a 24-pointed star-shaped plan for the vimana.
The Deccan Plateau, by virtue of its geographical location between the north and south, was a melting pot of architectural ideas from both regions. Deccani artisans, being aware of the northern Nagara tradition, tended to experiment with novel ways of tweaking and putting together architectural components, within the bounds of the Dravida tradition.
This led to such dramatically different forms that an evolved temple of the Kalyani Chalukya period was virtually unrecognisable as Dravida compared to the Badami Chalukya temples.
Nowhere is this spirit of experimentation better expressed than in the Kalleshwara Gudi at Hire Hadagali. This unassuming little temple is a masterpiece of sculptural excellence as well as a testimony to grand architectural innovation. The walls of Karnata Dravida temples are usually adorned with miniature shrines carved in relief that faithfully capture the geometry of actual temple vimanas at smaller scales. Hire Hadagali is no exception, but the dexterity of carving here literally takes one’s breath away.
Whereas in most temples, ornaments like miniature shrines and makara-toranas are merely carved in relief, here these elements literally leap out of the stone it is carved from, giving the outer layer of stone the delicate sophistication of filigree work in lace.
Stone seemed to have the pliancy of clay in the hands of those talented artisans. And among the miniature shrines carved on the walls of Hire Hadagali are so many experiments which were never built. These experiments, nonetheless, showcase the bold experimentation carried out by those intrepid artisans. There are vimanas with pure Dravida elements arranged in the architectural grammar of the Nagara, and combinations of Nagara and Dravida elements too.
It is known that, when the fledgling Hoysala dynasty signalled their imperial ambitions by commissioning royal temples, artisans from the Kalyani Chalukya heartland had migrated south to Hoysala-land. Here they laid the foundations of the celebrated Hoysala style of temple-building. There is evidence, from inscriptions and sculptural themes, for the migration of artisans from Lokkigundi to Belur. And it is nothing short of exhilarating to see an architectural tradition of Lakkundi and other nuclei of temple-building under the Kalyani Chalukyas, finding a new lease of life down south, under the Hoysalas.
(Srikumar Menon is with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, and Kailasa Rao is the Director of the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal.)