Hampi - A Journey to Lost Glory

I can't just call Hampi as a historical place, it is a place of mystical ruins, a place with cultural heritage, and also a place of mythical monkey kingdom.

Yes, years beyond the great warriors ruled Hampi, it was a famous monkey kingdom known as Kishkinda, where Lord Rama killed the monkey king,Vali, and asked for help to search Sita from Sugreeva.

Hampi is now the most searched historical place in India.

Hampi, a heritage city is bordered by Tungabhadra river on one side and surrounded by huge hills on the other three sides. This made very difficult for the other rulers to acquire Hampi. But finally the deccan sultanates captured Vijayanagara kingdom in the battle of Talikota, destroyed, and ruined it completely. It is believed that it took them almost a year to destroy the Hampi city.  

 

I have tried to picturise the vast hampi in my small blog which has both the information of our travel and also the historical outline.
Saturday, we four decided for a trip to coorg (one of the longings of Mahesh) with two children, but in the sunday morning that too on the way, Satish gave an option to travel to Hampi. Here begins the journey to the mystical place from Bangalore, A journey of 350 km via tumkur, Chitrdurga, and Hospet.
Sunday, we started our journey @ 7 in the morning, tasted the hot and tasty thatte idli at a hotel Pavithra in Kyathsandra and reached hospet @ 3 in the evening for lunch. 

With the heavily filled stomach drove towards the Thungabadra dam, hey hold on for a second I forgot to mention about the mesmerizing river view of Thungabadra on the way to hospet. The river was not making a rumbling sound to be heard from far distance but it was amazingly looking like a moving sea with the waves coming towards us.

 

We reached Thungabadra dam around 5 in the evening to find out that all the internal travel bus
tickets were closed. We decided to walk in the pleasant cool air. The 63 year old Thungabadra dam was looking as if it is dressed with the long and broad green saree. Yes, the dam was almost full. It was scary but there was a welcoming wavy sound from the river. The dam area also has a power generation system, beautiful garden, and a musical fountain. 

 

That night we stayed in Hotel Priyadarshini, Hospet. A good hotel with the tasty food. Next day in the morning, had our breakfast and headed towards Hampi. Around 8.30 in the morning, we stood in front of Virupaksha temple, Hampi in search of a good guide. A guide who could drive us back to hundreds of years and make us understand the fact and the way the real warriors were leading their life.
We wanted to correlate and enhance our knowledge that we had about Vijayanagara kingdom with his expedite information. It is always good to have a tourist guide with us to know and understand the cultural value of the historical cities and the monuments.

 Since it was a one day journey, we were unfortunate to cover only few places in Hampi, but fortunate enough to gather sufficient information about all the visited places from guide. We missed the most heard place in Hampi known as Anegundi as the sun started hiding from us and giving us a hint to head towards Bangalore. Finally without a dual mind Satish drove us back to Bangalore around 3 in the early morning.

I have tried to seize most of the information in this blog that got piled up in our mind from the tourist guide with the list of places that we visited. Let's start with the brief history of Hampi rulers, that we heard from the guide.

Hampi was the capital of Vijayanagara. One of the cultural heritage of the nation on the banks of Thungabadra river.  Many monuments were built between AD 1336-1570, from the times of Harihara-I to Sadasiva Raya. Many royal buildings were raised by Krishnadevaraya, a great warrior of Vijayanagara from Tuluva dynasty.

Many kings from Sangama, Saluva, and Tuluva dynasty ruled Vijayanagara for more than two and a quarter century till its dramatic fall and destruction in 1565 AD. The battle of Rakkasa-Tangadi (Talikota) spelt disaster to the city and empire. It survived yet for another hundred years under the kings of Aravidu dynasty, with the capitals of Penagonda and Chandragiri, but never regained its past glory.

 

The Virupaksha temple houses shiva linga known as Virupaksha. This temple is also known as pampapathi temple. This is still the most sacred and living temple of Hampi.The outstanding vestige is the ceiling paintings of vijayanagara in the ranga mantapa.The noteworthy paintings depicts the ten incarnations of Vishnu, Girija kalyana, and Arjuna piercing the matsyayantra, more are there, but I remember only this.There are series of broken mantapas on either side of the temple. It is believed to be known as bazaar where people used to sell pearls and diamonds.

 

 

 

 

 

Sasive Kalu Ganesha is a huge monolithic sculpture of Lord Ganesha. The image is carved such a manner that Ganesha is seated on the lap of his mother parvathi (from the backside). It is believed that the merchants from Andra pradesh got enormous gain on selling the mustard seed in the market and hence they build this temple known as Sasive Kalu Ganesha.

 

 

 Kadle Kalu Ganesha is also a monolithic image.It is surrounded by tall slender pillars of the mantapa. It is well sculptured with the depictions of daily life of common man and various goddess.
 

 

  Lakshmi Narasimha is a huge monolithic sculpture and is one of the most outstanding sculptural art of Vijayanagara. The image of Goddess Lakshmi, seated over the left lap of Narsimha is mutilated. Only the left arm of Lakshmi embracing Narasimha is seen.

  

Badavi Linga is nearly 3 meters high with the lower part of the linga immersed in water throughout the year. It is housed in a chamber with an opening in the front and on the top. This super structure though present is in a dilapidated condition.

The palaces has a series of structures in the form of rooms, large halls, terraced structures built of gold and sandal wood, which was burnt completely by muslim kings. It took with well laid garden and water system.
 

 The Lotus mahal is a built in an indo-islamic style of architecture, and is a two storeyed structure with the facility to store water on the top of it. The water storage provided a cool effect on Lotus mahal during summer time for the queens. Krishnadevaraya used to be in war for more than 6 to 8 months in a year and during that time his two queens used to spend the days in Lotus mahal with full security.
 

The Hazaar Rama temple is a beautiful temple. All the walls on this temple has the carvings and inscriptions depicting the story of Ramayana, which cannot be easily understood unless you go with the tourist guide. As you might miss the continuity of thousands of carvings and inscriptions from one wall to another.
 

The Vitthala temple is one of the important temples found in hampi, Many kings added many new architectural edifices within the temple. Krishnadevaraya made substantial additions to it. The courtyard of the temple has a hundred pillard mantapa, much framed stone chariot, and a garuda shrine in the front. It is told that Krishna devaraya build a mantapa with musical pillars for his wife Chinnadevi to dance (the way she showed her devotion to god). Each pillar housed in the mantapa has the carvings of different musical instruments and it is believed that the pillar produces sound of the particular carvings it has been etched with. Most of the pillars were ruined by muslim kings and now ruined by the local people.

 

 

 

 

The Deccan muslims planned to destroy the Hampi completely, but left it incomplete and made this as a ruined historical visiting place.