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Buddhism in Northern Karnataka has seen major development after the discovery of an Ashoka inscription at Maski in Raichur District a few decades ago and of a Buddhist settlement through a series of archaeological excavations at Sannati which have shed light on the historic significance of Karnataka.
During 1954-95, 81 stone inscriptions, 2 stupas, 3 dibbas or mounds and a defence fort have been discovered at Sannati. [1]
Buddhism had in fact entered Karnataka before the time of the Emperor Ashoka, and that it enjoyed its heyday between the 3rd century B.C. and the 3rd century A.D. [2] [3]
Buddhism first emerged during Mauryas times when there was a missionary zeal. Parts of Karnataka were subject to the rule of the Mauryas. Chandragupta Maurya's son Bindusara (298-273 BC) and Bindusara's son Ashoka (269-232 BC) caused some of his edicts to be put up here. Ashoka's grandson Samprati Chandragupta is believed to have come to Shravanabelagola where he spent his last years.
Eleven Ashokas edicts: 4 in Bellary District, 3 in Raichur District and 3 others in Chitradurga District bear witness to the Mauryas presence in Karnataka.
The Satavahana may have been a Karnataka dynasty, as Dharwad and Bellary Districts are called Shantavahani Hara (or Shantavahana region). Some of their kings were called rulers of Kunthala, the old name for Karnataka.
The Satavahana were successors to the Mauryas and ruled in Banavasi, as is evident from the Nasik inscription of Gautamiputra Satakarni and the copper plates from Hirehadagali.
At Sannati in Gulbarga District, as well as Vadgoan Madhavpur near Belgaum and Brahmagiri in Chitradurga District, there are remains of monuments of their period. The Uttara Kannada area of Banavasi has their inscription at Vasan in Dharwad District, and there are remains of a brick temple.
Kadambas capital was also Banavasi, known as Vaijayanti. They were tolerant towards Buddhism as epigraphic evidence shows. Recent excavations of the site of Banavasi have given the remains of a Buddhist stupa. The large apsidal structure is what remains and it was planned like a dharma chakra. Kadambas century was a prominent one for Buddhism in Karnataka.
Chinese traveller, Hieun Tsang, visited Banavasi in the 7th century AD and saw 1000 sangharamas and three stupas. He said "By the side of the royal palace was a great sangharama with 300 priests, all men of distinction. This convent has a great vihara 100 in height".[ citation needed ]
Aihole, is today an insignificant village in Bagalkot District of North Karnataka. This place was a workshop for temple architects and sculptors patronized by early Chalukyas monarchs. Here are some of the earliest structural temples in stone in the country, dating from 450 AD, including one of the 4 Buddhist shrines in Karnataka. Aihole's hillock, Meguti, to the rock cut Buddhist shrine. It is the most important surviving Buddhist temple in Karnataka.
The Buddhist Chaitya at Aihole, is pre western Chalukyas and indicates the influence of Mahayana. It was built around the 5th century and is 25 feet high.
Sannati, [4] [5] [6] Chitapur Taluk, Gulbarga District, on both banks of the river Bhima, that many Buddhist stupas of the Shatvahana times have been found. Sannati, which date back to the 1st to 3rd century AD, the oldest among the Karnataka Buddhist sites and monuments.
Sannati which resembles Amravati and was the Buddhist centre of the Shatvahana period of pre Christian era and stands as a significant cluster of dozens of Buddhist relics, which include 2 stupas, 3 mounds, 1 fortification, 4 major rock edicts and more than 75 contemporary inscriptions. All scattered across a compact area of about 10 square kilometres.
Sculptures can be seen all along and the Buddhist ruins found there are in large numbers. They include remnants of stupas, stone pottery for holy bones and ayaka stambha which has symbolic representation of birth, parinishnishkramana, enlightenment, preaching and nirvana (salvation) of Buddha.
Inscriptions in the Brahmi script contain names of those who gave grants to sangharama, stupas and viharas.
Badami, [7] the erstwhile capital city of the western Chalukyas in the 6th century. These rulers were also associated with Buddhism and relics here have survived in the shape of a Buddhist cave. There is also a figure, identifiable as Padmapani, the Bodhisattva of the same period.
The Chinese traveller Xuanzang (Hieun Tsang) has stated that during the time of Pulakeshin II in 642 AD in Banavasi or Konkanpura, there were 400 Sangharamas and 10000 followers of Buddhism.
A Dambala inscription of 1095 AD, begins with the customary invocation namo buddhyana and goes go to describe at length the greatness of Tara bhagavati.
Inscription of 1095 AD, a temple of the Buddhist deity Tara and a Buddhist vihara were built by 16 merchants during the reign of Lakshmidevi, queen of Vikramaditya VI. Another temple of Tara, built at Dambal was by Sethi Sangarmaya of Lokkigundi (Lakkundi).
Kolivada, Hubbali taluk, Dharwad District.
An icon of Tara has been discovered belonging to about the 13th century.
Inscribed on the pedestal of this icon are the words "siddham om namo bhagavatayai Aryatarayai", and followed by the usual statement of the Buddha's teaching in brief.
The Tibetan settlement at Mundgod, [8] is located 45 km from Hubli-Dharwad. and the settlement at Mundgod is the largest in India. It was founded in 1966. Now there are nine camps with two monasteries and a nunnery. One of the monasteries is Rato Dratsang.
Ashoka, also known as Ashoka the Great, Piodasses in ancient Greece, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 BCE. A grandson of the Maurya dynasty's founder Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka promoted the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia. Considered by many to be one of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka expanded Chandragupta's empire to reign over a realm stretching from present-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east. It covered the entire Indian subcontinent except for parts of present-day Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. The empire's capital was Pataliputra, with provincial capitals at Taxila and Ujjain.
Buddhism in Afghanistan first arrived in present-day Afghanistan through the conquests of the Mauryan King Ashoka, where the remains of an inscription in Kandahar written in 260 BCE were found on the rocky outcrop of Chil Zena. The religion was widespread south of the Hindu Kush mountains.
Kirttivarman I was a ruler of the Chalukya dynasty of Vatapi in India. He ruled parts of present-day Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
Uttara Karnataka, is a geographical region in Deccan plateau from 300 to 730 metres elevation that constitutes the region of the Karnataka state in India and the region consists of 14 districts. It is drained by the Krishna River and its tributaries the Bhima, Ghataprabha, Malaprabha, and Tungabhadra. North Karnataka lies within the Deccan thorn scrub forests ecoregion, which extends north into eastern Maharashtra. Most parts of the region has black fertile soil ideal for agriculture.
Ron is a taluka headquarters in Gadag district, Karnataka in India. Of historical importance, the town was termed Dronapur in ancient times. The temples are believed to be constructed by the ancient architect and warrior-priest Dronacharya.
The Badami Chalukya architecture was a temple building idiom that evolved in the 5th – 8th centuries AD in the Malaprabha river basin, in present-day Bagalkot district of Karnataka state of India, under the Chalukya dynasty. This style is sometimes called the Vesara style and Chalukya style, a term that also includes the much later Western Chalukya architecture of the 11th and 12th centuries. Early Chalukya architecture, used by George Michell and others, equates to Badami Chalukya. The earliest Badami Chalukya temples date back to around 450 A.D. in Aihole when the Badami Chalukyas were vassals of the Kadambas of Banavasi. According to historian K.V. Sounder Rajan, the Badami Chalukyas contribution to temple building matched their valor and their achievements in battle.
Karnataka, the sixth largest state in India, has been ranked as the third most popular state in the country for tourism in 2014. It is home to 507 of the 3600 centrally protected monuments in India, the largest number after Uttar Pradesh. The State Directorate of Archaeology and Museums protects an additional 752 monuments and another 25,000 monuments are yet to receive protection. Tourism centres on the ancient sculptured temples, modern cities, the hill ranges, forests and beaches. Broadly, tourism in Karnataka can be divided into four geographical regions: North Karnataka, the Hill Stations, Coastal Karnataka and South Karnataka.
Karnataka, a state in South India has a long association with Jainism, a religion which enjoyed patronage of major historic kingdoms in the state such as the Rastrakuta Dynasty, Western Ganga, Kadamba and Chalukya dynasties and the Hoysala Empire. Today the state is home to a number of Jain monuments, such as temples, Gommata statues and stambhas.
Dambala is a village in the gadag district of the state of Karnataka, India. It was an ancient center of Buddhism and remained so as late as the 12th century. Dambal is at an elevation of 590 m (1,940 ft).
Religion in Karnataka has played a very important role in shaping modern Indian religions and philosophy.
Temples of North Karnataka
Sannati or Sannathi is a small village, located on the banks of the Bhima River in Chitapur taluk of Gulbarga District of Northern Karnataka. It is famous for the Chandrala Parameshwari Temple and the excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India done in 1986.
Kanaganahalli is about 3 km from Sannati. An important Jain site, the place where an ancient Buddhist Mahastupa site found. It is on the left bank of the Bhima river in Chitapur taluk, Gulbarga District in Karnataka, India. Nalwar is the nearest Railway station about 19 km from Kanaganahalli. The Buddhist site about 2.5 km from Chandrala Parameshwari temple of Sannati.
The Chalukya dynasty was a Classical Indian dynasty that ruled large parts of southern and central India between the 6th and the 12th centuries. During this period, they ruled as three related yet individual dynasties. The earliest dynasty, known as the "Badami Chalukyas", ruled from Vatapi from the middle of the 6th century. The Badami Chalukyas began to assert their independence at the decline of the Kadamba kingdom of Banavasi and rapidly rose to prominence during the reign of Pulakeshin II. After the death of Pulakeshin II, the Eastern Chalukyas became an independent kingdom in the eastern Deccan. They ruled from Vengi until about the 11th century. In the western Deccan, the rise of the Rashtrakutas in the middle of the 8th century eclipsed the Chalukyas of Badami before being revived by their descendants, the Western Chalukyas, in the late 10th century. These Western Chalukyas ruled from Kalyani until the end of the 12th century.
Kadamba architecture was a style of temple architecture founded by Mayurasharma in the 4th century AD in Karnataka, India. Kadambas created new style of architecture which was the basis of the Hoysalas style of architecture, developed original school of sculpture, was the forerunner of series of South Indian sculptors. Many temples at Aihole, Badami and Hampi are built in Kadamba style.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Karnataka:
About 25,000 inscriptions found in Karnataka belongs to Kannada rulers like Kadambas, Western Ganga Dynasty, Rashtrakuta, Chalukya, Hoysala and Vijayanagara Empire. Many inscriptions related to Jainism are unearthed. The inscriptions generally found are on stone (Shilashasana) or copper plates (Tamarashasana). The Kannada inscriptions found on historical Hero Stone, coin and temple wall, piller, tablet and rock edict. These Inscription have contributed towards Kannada literature and helped to classify as Proto Kannada, Pre Old Kannada, Old Kannada, Middle Kannada and New KannadaInscriptions depicts culture, tradition and prosperity of those era. The world wide recognized literature Ramayana and Mahabharata are transferred through generation by these Inscription Hazara Rama Temple and Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple are the best example.
The Buddhist caves in India form an important part of Indian rock-cut architecture, and are among the most prolific examples of rock-cut architecture around the world. There are more than 1,500 known rock cut structures in India, out of which about 1000 were made by Buddhists, 300 by Hindus, and 200 by Jains. Many of these structures contain works of art of global importance, and many later caves from the Mahayana period are adorned with exquisite stone carvings. These ancient and medieval structures represent significant achievements of structural engineering and craftsmanship.