A trek to the first millennium at Aijuru

While walking from the Ramanagara railway station to the bus stand, I observed the top of a hill called Ijoor Betta, on the far horizon. By the time I reached the bus stand, the hill had disappeared from my line of sight. I was unable to comprehend the name ‘Ijoor’ till an octogenarian gentleman, Ramappa, gave me an explanation. 

In the good old days, there used to be only five houses near the hills of this area, he said. Thus, everyone started calling the place Aidu Mane Ooru (place of five homes), which got distorted as Aidooru, Aijuru, and Aijur, to the present Ijoor.

The Epigraphia Carnatica Vol IX (1905) mentions an inscription dated 1351 AD, found ‘at Aijuru, in the Closepet Hobli, on a stone near Mari temple’; Closepet being the earlier name of Ramanagara town. This aroused my curiosity to look for that temple and see the inscription.

At Ijoor, when I enquired with the shopkeepers surrounding the busy highways, none knew about the Mari temple with the inscription stone. After visiting various temples in scores of by-lanes, I finally succeeded in locating the small temple, now called the ‘Kukkalla Mahadevamma Maaramma Devasthaana’. Fortunately, the inscription slab still survives there. It is partly buried in the ground, with only 11 out of 19 lines of the inscription visible. This inscription talks about the grants made ‘when Vira Bukkappa Vodeyar was ruling the kingdom of the world’. 

I resumed my trek towards Ijoor Betta, passing through the mud tracks between two small hills on either side. Climbing carefully on the slippery parts, I found many natural rain-fed water bodies and small caves on the hill. The panoramic view from the top was mesmerising, with the Dodda Rayana Kere on the other side of the hill. 

While descending down a mud track, I observed a broken pillar resting on two huge boulders on a smaller hill. As I was exploring the area, a young couple living nearby, Akshay and Meghana, also joined me. We started combing the area that was full of waste, overgrown plants and thorny shrubs. I exclaimed “Eureka” when we discovered a set of nine hero stones lying in a rocky crevice, hidden among wild plants. 

A few days later, I read a report of the Mysore Archaeological Survey (1909-10) that mentioned ‘another important Ganga inscription discovered at Aijuru’. As per the Mysore Gazetteer Vol II (1930), edited by Hayavadana Rao, the inscription belonged to the year 869 AD. The hero stone was erected immediately after the demise of King Nitimarga of Western Ganga Dynasty. I wondered if I could rediscover this inscription, which is more than 1150 years old. Its location, as mentioned in the supplement to EC Vol IX, was an ‘abandoned plot belonging to Shivachara Rudraiah’.

The rediscovery

Walking through the lanes and by-lanes of Ijoor on my next visit there, I began asking the locals about the family members of Shivachara Rudraiah. After a long search for families settled here before 1900, I found the Shaasana in a construction site. EC Vol IX mentioned the height of the stone as 3.75 feet, but only 2.5 feet was now visible above the ground.

After digging the surrounding earth up to four feet with my bare hands and a small twig and cleaning the muddy surface, I could make out faintly visible alphabets. There was also a clear image of a man armed with a bow in the left hand and a sword in the right hand. I could also see horses inscribed ‘to the right’, as mentioned in MAS (1909-10). 

The uniqueness of this inscription lies in the information it holds about the Western Ganga Dynasty King Nitimarga, who fought endless wars but chose to die by sallekhana (fasting to death). Realising the futility of wars, he had arranged his son’s marriage with the daughter of Amoghavarsha, the Emperor of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty, in an effort to bring peace to the land.

Worried about the disfigurement of this first-millennium inscription that could be caused during the construction at the site, I revisited this place to apprise the owners of the land of the significance of the most ancient inscription mentioned in EC Vol IX, in Ramanagara taluk (the erstwhile Closepet).

But I was aghast to see the inscription slab missing from its original location where it had stood for more than a millennium! Fortunately, the family informed me that they had dug it out and placed it among the bushes near the hero stones. I could now see the slab in its original height of seven feet.

While the 14th-century inscription is safe in Maramma temple, I do hope this important 1153-year-old, 9th-century historical inscription, which has survived to date, is preserved for posterity.  

The inscription stone.

An inscription stone dating back to 869 AD.

The inscription stone after it was dug up and moved.