Chamunda Raya Had the 57-Foot Gommateshwara Statue Cut in Granite on Vindhyagiri at Shravanabelagola in the 980s, and Three Short Inscriptions at Its Feet Say So

The Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola in Hassan district, Karnataka, is about 57 feet (17 metres) high and is cut in granite on top of Vindhyagiri hill. Three short inscriptions at its feet say that the minister and general Chamunda Raya had it made. B. Lewis Rice, who edited the town’s inscriptions for the Mysore Archaeological Department in 1889, and the department’s revised edition of 1923 both put the work at about 983 CE, in the reign of the Western Ganga king Rachamalla. Karnataka Tourism and the Hassan district website give 981. The Archaeological Survey of India lists the statue among its centrally protected monuments.

What stands on Vindhyagiri

Rice opened his introduction with the sight a traveller gets on the road from Bangalore to the western coast near Channarayapatna: a hill a few miles to the south with what first looks like a column on top, which turns out to be a colossal statue of a man. He wrote that it is visible for miles. The hill, called Vindhyagiri or Dodda-betta (the big hill) and sometimes Indragiri, is 3,347 feet above sea level and about 470 feet (143 metres) above the plain at its foot, according to both Rice and the 1923 edition.

The figure is the Jain saint Gommata, also called Bahubali. The Hassan district website describes him as a son of Adinatha, the first Tirthankara (the Jain term for the great teachers), who gave up his kingdom after a contest with his brother Bharata and stood in meditation. The statue shows him standing erect and facing north, nude, in the way of the Digambara (“sky-clad”) Jain tradition. Rice and the 1923 edition describe the same details. The figure has no support above the thighs. Ant-hills with snakes rising from them surround the lower body, a climbing plant winds round both legs and both arms and ends in berries or flowers on the upper arms, and the feet rest on an open lotus. The 1923 editors read the ant-hills and creeper as signs of an ascetic so deep in penance that the earth built up around him.

The 1923 edition describes a serene face, short curled hair, long ears and arms hanging straight, and calls the stone a fine-grained light-grey granite, in a passage it takes from an earlier visitor’s book. A flight of about five hundred steps cut in the rock leads up to an open court inside a battlemented corridor of cells that hold Jina figures. The architectural historian Fergusson, whom Rice quotes, thought the statue was probably cut from a mass of rock already standing on the hilltop, since hauling such a block up the slope would have been beyond the builders. He judged that “nothing grander or more imposing exists out of Egypt.”

On the lotus pedestal the sculptor cut a measuring scale. Rice gives its length as about 3 feet 3.5 inches and calls it evidently the unit of the original design. The 1923 edition gives 3 feet 4 inches and says it was probably used in laying out the work.

Three short lines at the feet

The inscriptions naming the patron are brief. On the ant-hill rock beside the feet, one line in old Kannada reads, in the 1923 transliteration, “Sri Chamunda Rajam madisidam”: Chamunda Raja had it made. A second says the same in Tamil, written in Grantha and Vatteluttu letters. A third, in Nagari letters, says it in a language the 1923 edition calls Marathi; Rice thought it more likely a Jain form of Prakrit. Rice treats all three as belonging to the time the work was finished, and the 1923 editors call them synchronous records.

None of the three gives a date, a king’s name or the sculptor’s name. Rice admired the plainness of the lines and wrote that the sculptor of so large a work “has not so much as left a record of his name.”

Two further lines, in Nagari and Kannada, record that Ganga Raja built the enclosure or cloister round the figure. Ganga Raja was a minister of the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana and died in 1133, Rice says. Rice dates the cloister lines to 1116, because an inscription of 1115 describing his works does not mention it and one of 1117 does. The 1923 edition says about 1117.

Patronage continued under later rulers. An inscription of about 1159 in the 1923 edition records that the Hoysala minister Hullamayya, receiving the village of Savaneru from the king Narasimha, granted it to pay for the eight kinds of worship of Gommata, of Parsva and of the twenty-four Tirthankaras. An inscription of about 1180 (No. 234 in the 1923 numbering) is a Kannada poem by Boppana. It says Chamunda Raya had the statue made and praises it in verse. The 1923 translation has the poet saying that in the figure “loftiness, real beauty and mighty supernatural power” are all united.

The minister behind it

Chamunda Raya served the Western Ganga king Rachamalla (the fourth of that name), whose reign Rice dates from 974 to 984. The 1923 edition summarises an inscription listing his campaigns and titles. It also says he wrote a Kannada account of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, the Chamundaraya Purana, in 978. In its opening and closing chapters he lists titles won in battle, and one, Satya-Yudhishthira, for never telling an untruth even in jest. The same volume records that a Sanskrit commentary says his teacher Nemichandra wrote the Prakrit text Gommatasara for his instruction.

A Kannada text summarised in the 1923 edition says Rachamalla gave Chamunda Raya the title Raya on hearing of his gifts. The ASI’s list of protected monuments at Sravanabelgola includes a Chaundaraya Basti (a Jain temple), along with the Akkana, Chandragupta and Parsvanatha bastis and the group of inscriptions. For the smaller hill opposite, Chandragiri, and the tradition of Chandragupta Maurya there, see the Chandragupta Maurya article.

981 or 983

Rice and the 1923 editors argue from the record. Rachamalla came to the throne in 974 and his reign ended about 984. Chamunda Raya’s Purana of 978 describes his achievements at length and does not mention the statue, which Rice found hard to believe if it already stood. Tradition says it was completed in Rachamalla’s reign. They therefore place it after 978 and before 984, and settle on 983 “in the absence of more precise information,” in the 1923 phrasing.

Karnataka Tourism says the statue was erected in 981 by the minister Chavundaraya, and the Hassan district site says he consecrated it in 981. D’source, a learning resource from the National Institute of Design in Bengaluru, gives a day, 13 March 981, as the date tradition holds for the first anointing. A Sanskrit verse that Rice says is written at the head of the orders issued by the town’s Jain head gives the traditional day: the fifth day of the bright half of Chaitra, a Sunday, in the year called Vibhava, in the year 600 of the Kali era as the Jains count it. Rice noted that by his reckoning the year Vibhava falls in 968 or 1028, neither of which fits the facts, and he did not use it.

So 981 and 983 are both approximations of the same event within about two years. The 1981 festival was held to mark a thousand years of the ceremony, the Deccan Herald reported in 2018, and the Press Information Bureau said in the same year that the anointing has been celebrated for about 1,000 years.

How tall it is

Early European visitors disagreed, with estimates from 60 feet 3 inches (Sir Arthur Wellesley) to 70 feet 3 inches (Buchanan), as Rice records. Rice gives 57 feet from the sculptor’s own scale. The 1923 edition adds that the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, Bowring, had a platform built and the statue measured on 1 January 1865, and the height recorded was 57 feet.

Present-day pages round differently. Karnataka Tourism says 58 feet, a Star of Mysore feature of 10 February 2018 says 58.8 feet, and the Hassan district site says 18 metres, about 59 feet. This article uses 57 feet, the figure from the two departmental editions.

Karnataka Tourism’s page calls Shravanabelagola home to the world’s largest monolithic statue. That is the department’s own description, not a ranking from an independent body. Rice’s narrower claim is that this is the oldest and considerably the highest of the three Gommata statues known to him. The other two stand at Karkala (41 feet 5 inches, set up in 1432) and Venur (35 feet, 1604), in the 1923 edition’s figures.

The story the tradition tells

Later Kannada texts, among them the Bhujabali-charite of 1614 as summarised in the 1923 edition, tell how the statue came to be. They say Bharata, Bahubali’s brother, had a golden image made at Podanapura, and that the way to it later became impassable. Chamunda Raya’s mother vowed not to take milk until she saw Gommata. On the journey the family stopped at Shravanabelagola and were told in a dream that the god would show himself on the larger hill if Chamunda Raya shot a golden arrow from the smaller one, and the head of the image appeared where the arrow struck.

The same sources say that when the first anointing began, the milk would not flow below the thighs until an old woman, Gullakayajji, offered a little milk in a white gullakayi fruit. These are the traditions as the texts give them. Rice notes that the 12th-century inscription and all the later accounts agree on one point: Chamunda Raya wished to reproduce the image at Podanapura, which he had heard of.

The head anointing every 12 years

The Mahamastakabhisheka, the “great head anointing,” is held about once in 12 years. The Press Information Bureau said on 6 February 2018 that it is celebrated every 12 years and has been for about 1,000 years. Its release of 7 February records that the President of India inaugurated the 2018 festival that day. The Deccan Herald and the Star of Mysore reported that the anointing of the statue itself ran from 17 to 25 February 2018. D’source and the Star of Mysore both describe 1,008 pots or vessels poured over the statue, with tender coconut water, milk, sugarcane juice, turmeric paste and other offerings. The Hassan district page adds that the finale is a shower of flowers from a helicopter.

The next festival is expected in 2030. That date comes from a Deccan Herald headline of 25 February 2018 and from D’source. In the sources checked on 6 November 2026, no official notice of 2030 dates had been published.

Reaching and climbing it

Karnataka Tourism’s page, last reviewed on 4 November 2026, gives the practical facts. Shravanabelagola is 145 kilometres from Bengaluru, with buses and taxis from Hassan and Mysuru and a railway station with trains from Bengaluru and Mysuru. For air travel it names Mysuru airport, 85 kilometres away. The Hassan district website puts the town about 150 kilometres from Bangalore. Karnataka Tourism adds that visitors climb more than 600 steps to the statue, that the climb needs moderate fitness, that visitors should carry water and wear comfortable footwear, and that photography restrictions may apply in some temples. Step counts in other sources run from about 500 (the 1923 edition) to 650 (D’source).

The town sits in the same district as the temples at Belur and Halebidu, described in the Hoysala temples article, and the Hassan district site lists them among its tourist places. Karnataka Tourism counts more than 600 rock inscriptions in the town, from the 7th to the 19th centuries. The tourism page and the Hassan page give no opening hours, so check locally before travelling.