Malleshwaram: Myths and Memories

Sahapedia is an online resource on arts, culture and heritage. It also conducts programmes and events. It recently organised the second edition of the month-long India Heritage Walk, with walking tours in over 35 Indian cities.

I had the pleasure of participating in one of these walks conducted by Sujata Balakrishnan a few weeks ago, and here is a description of my experience along with some intriguing facts I learnt from the walk.

Image source: https://thinkbangalore.blogspot.com/2015/05/kadu-mallikarjunaswamy-temple.html#.XIFJISgzbtQ

The walk I went for was around Malleshwaram, a well-known locality of Bangalore. The walk was named “Down Memory Lane” and it began early in the morning on Sunday, 24^th February. You probably think I’m a loser to wake up early on a Sunday to do something educational, but this wasn’t just a tedious tour from which you come back full of unimportant, monotonous facts. In fact, some of the things I learnt would really impress and excite young readers. For example, did you know that the fictional town of ‘Malgudi’ written about by R K Narayan, was named after Malleshwaram and Basavangudi combined (‘Mal’ from Malleshwaram and ‘gudi’ from Basavangudi)? I bet not!

Malleshwaram was created in the early 19^th century for a unique reason.

In 1898, a deadly plague affected Bangalore’s city-centre, spreading rapidly because of the town’s unsanitary conditions. The British (who were ruling India at the time) began to worry about the plague spreading to their cantonments. Hence, they built the new hygienic suburbs of Malleshwaram and Basavangudi.

By the way, the word ‘Malleshwaram’ comes from the Kannada word ‘male’ meaning hill and ‘eshwara’ for the Shiva temple there.

After we learnt about the fascinating history of Malleshwaram, we were taken to a temple called Sri Dakshinamukha Nandi Tirtha Kalyani Kshetra. This temple too has an awe-inspiring story behind it.

When the temple was first discovered, it didn’t have much except a Nandi statue in it. One special thing about the statue was that there was a continuous flow of water that dripped down from its mouth and onto the ground. Anyway, the residents of Malleshwaram assumed it was just a Nandi temple, and contained no other deity.

However, in 1997, there was attempt to grab the temple area and use it for some development. The residents were very indignant and protested passionately. They dug the area around the temple claiming that this was temple area and should be protected. Everyone was shocked to find that below the existing Nandi statue was a large Shiva lingam and an entire temple complex that had been lost all these years! The water from Nandi’s mouth was actually falling onto the lingam and constantly bathing it!

The community was allowed to keep the temple that way, but to this day, nobody knows the source of the water that flows from Nandi’s mouth.

Next, we visited a temple that had a rock with Shivaji’s inscriptions on it. The rock was inside a temple whose maintenance he funded. It has an inscription on it in Old Kannada saying “Anyone who damages or defaces this temple is akin to a Muslim eating pork in Mecca or a Hindu slaughtering a cow in Varanasi.” The powerful words ensured that nobody damaged the temple in any way.

The last temple we entered – Kadu Mallikarjunaswamy Temple – has another myth behind it. It goes as follows.

One day, a betel leaf merchant, tired out from a day’s work, decided to rest under a tree in a forest (kadu). He felt hungry, and lit a fire to cook some food. As the fire began to kindle, he heard an angry voice shout at him to stop. It told him that he was about to commit sacrilege. He looked down, surprised, and saw that what he thought was a stone was actually a Shiva lingam rising out of rock (swayambhu).

He decided to build a temple around it, and to this day, the temple is still standing with the swayambhu lingam, surrounded by tall, green trees. It is calm and peaceful, with the only sounds around being the crunching of twigs and the rustling of leaves.

I certainly learnt a lot of interesting things about Malleshwaram that day. At the end of the walk, we had a hearty breakfast at New Krishna Bhavan. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk and am looking forward to more such walks organised by Sahapedia.