Mysuru Dasara Ran From 11 to 21 October 2026, and the 417th Jamboo Savari Carried Goddess Chamundeshwari to Bannimantap in a 750-Kilogram Golden Howdah

The Jamboo Savari of 21 October 2026, the finale of Mysuru Dasara, took the idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari from the Mysuru Palace to Bannimantap, about five kilometres away, in a golden howdah of 750 kilograms on an elephant named Prashantha. Gulf News and The Hans India counted it as the 417th procession and reported that Prashantha, who had walked in it 16 times before, was carrying the howdah for the first time.

Twelve elephants took part, with the female elephants Roopa and Cauvery walking on either side of him. The Chief Minister offered flowers to the goddess in the howdah at the palace during the Meena lagna, the time window the palace almanac had fixed. The official Dasara portal gave 4:10 to 4:35 pm for that offering, called the Pushparchane, and said the procession leaves the palace after it.

Ten lunar days, eleven calendar dates

Mysuru Dasara is Karnataka’s state festival, the Nada Habba, and the portal says the Mysuru District Administration organises it. In 2026 it ran from Sunday 11 October to Wednesday 21 October. The Palace panchanga (the almanac the palace follows) begins Sharannavaratri on 11 October, with a Chamundeshwari puja on Chamundi Hill between 11:50 am and 12:13 pm. Each day honours one form of the goddess, from Shailaputri on Prathama, the first lunar day, to Mahagauri on Navami, the ninth.

The calendar marks Saraswati puja on 16 October and Mahishasura samhara, the slaying of Mahishasura, on 17 October. On Mahanavami, 20 October, the palace worships the instruments of work and war, including its elephants and horses, in the Ayudha puja. Vijayadashami, 21 October, brings the Shami and Aparajita Devi pujas before the procession. Official pages call it a ten-day festival, and the portal’s own count is eleven days. Its calendar lists Ashtami on both 18 and 19 October, so the ten lunar days of Prathama to Dashami fill eleven dates.

The Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India portal gives the tradition behind these days: Durga defeated the buffalo demon king Mahishasura after a nine-night battle and won on the tenth day, Vijayadashami. It says the battle is believed to have taken place on Chamundi Hills, where the goddess stayed on as Chamundi Devi, and that the city’s name is linked to that account.

The goddess on the hill above the city

The Karnataka government’s temple department describes Chamundi Hill, also called Mahabaladri, as about 3,489 feet above sea level. Devotees reach the temple by road or by climbing about 1,000 steps. In the sanctum Chamundeshwari sits with eight arms, and the department’s page says the stone idol is held to have been installed by the sage Markandeya. A five-metal (panchaloha) festival idol is used in processions. The gateway tower has seven storeys and seven gold finials.

The department says the shrine is older than the 16th century, with a recorded history of more than 500 years, and that the Mysuru royal family built it. The same page says Mysuru was once called Mahishurapura. Inside the temple stand stone statues of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar and of a queen.

What Domingos Paes saw at Vijayanagara around 1520

The portal and Karnataka Tourism both trace Dasara to the Mahanavami festival of the Vijayanagara empire at Hampi. The earliest eyewitness description comes from Domingos Paes, a Portuguese traveller who wrote probably in 1520 to 1522, during the reign of Krishnadevaraya (1509 to 1529), according to historian Chitra Madhavan. Robert Sewell translated his account in A Forgotten Empire.

Paes writes that the feasts began on 12 September and lasted nine days at the king’s palace. Sewell’s note says the details fit the year 1520. Each morning the king went to a building Paes calls the House of Victory, made, he says, when the king came back from the war against Orya, and prayed before an idol attended by Brahmans. The king threw white roses to eleven decorated horses and offered perfumes to them, then did the same for four elephants. Dancing women performed in the courtyard, and on each of the nine days one of the queens sent her ladies to attend.

Paes also records offerings of buffaloes and sheep at the idol’s shrine and gives the total for the last day as 250 buffaloes and 4,500 sheep. When the nine days were over, he writes, the king held a review of all his forces, with a tent pitched a full league from the city. Fernao Nuniz, who wrote probably in 1535 to 1537, adds that the captains paid their yearly land rents during these days, that a thousand wrestlers fought before the king, and that at the end of the review the king shot three arrows.

At Hampi the stone platform known as the Mahanavami Dibba still stands. Madhavan describes it as a three-tiered platform about twelve metres high with a base of 35 square metres, built for the monarchs to watch parades, with carved dancers and musicians on its walls. The Archaeological Survey of India lists it among the main remains of the royal enclosure and notes its sculptured panels. The city is covered in Hampi, the Vijayanagara capital and its best-known ruler in Krishnadevaraya and the golden age of Vijayanagara.

From Srirangapatna in 1610 to the palace in Mysuru

The portal says that when Vijayanagara fell in 1565 its feudatories carried the Mahanavami tradition with them, among them the Wadiyars of Mysuru, and that Raja Wadiyar I first celebrated Dasara at Srirangapatna in 1610. Karnataka Tourism gives the same year and place. The portal’s timeline adds that the Wadiyars returned to the throne in 1799 after the fall of Tipu Sultan and that the Durbar resumed, and that in 1805 Krishnaraja Wadiyar III opened the celebration to the people.

Deccan Herald reports that the first Dasara in Mysuru city was presided over by Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, then five years old, and that the Wadiyar family chronicle, Sri Manmaharajaravara Vamshavali, records it. The portal says Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, in the early 20th century, made Dasara the public event it is now, with exhibitions, sports contests, illumination and a procession open to every citizen.

The palace that hosts it is the stone one. Sahapedia and Karnataka Tourism both report that a wooden palace burned in 1897 during a wedding, that the British architect Henry Irwin designed the replacement, and that it was finished in 1912 at a cost of close to 42 lakh rupees. Inside, the portal says, the family’s private Durbar is held each evening of Navaratri in the Durbar Hall. A jewelled throne of fig wood plated with gold, the Ratna Simhasana, is assembled for it and seen by the public only in these days.

When the goddess took the king’s seat

The howdah, called the Chinnada Ambari, meaning the golden howdah, once carried the Maharaja. The Press Trust of India reported in 2024 that Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar was the last royal king of Mysuru to ride in it. The sources differ on the years that followed. PTI says Dasara became a private royal affair after the privy purse was abolished in 1971 and that the state revived public celebrations in 1975. The Hans India says the Maharaja stopped sitting in the howdah in 1970, that a people’s Dasara used a wooden Bharat Mata idol in the mid-1970s, and that the festival was declared the Nada Habba in 1980. The portal places the state’s adoption of Dasara in the 1970s.

The Hans India also gives the history of the present idol. The state first borrowed the golden howdah from the former royal family to carry a painted clay idol of Chamundeshwari. In 1987 officials asked the Mysuru sculptor N S Janardhana Murthy to make a permanent one. He finished a Hoysala-style panchaloha idol, 42 inches tall and over 72 kilograms, in 1989, and it has ridden in the howdah every year since 1990.

On the howdah’s make-up, the portal says it is teak plated with 80 kilograms of gold and weighs about 750 kilograms with the idol. PTI says the core is wood covered with 80 kilograms of gold and gives the howdah’s weight as 750 kilograms.

Twelve elephants from the forest camps

The portal says the elephants’ journey, the Gaja Payana, began on 26 August 2026 with a puja at the Veeranahosahalli gate of Nagarhole. After a short ceremonial walk the herd travels to Mysuru by truck. The elephants entered the palace on 28 August for the Gaja Puja. There they eat a diet of rice, ragi, jaggery, coconut, horse gram and green fodder, walk the procession route each morning, and the lead elephant trains with a sandbag howdah whose weight is raised until it reaches 750 kilograms.

The Karnataka Forest Department’s brochure, reproduced on the portal, lists twelve elephants for 2026 from the Dubare, Balle, Mattigodu, Bheemanakatte, Doddaharave and Ramapura camps. It describes Prashantha as a 54-year-old male of the Dubare camp, weighing 5,100 kilograms, captured in 1993 at Karekoppa in Shivamogga. The portal calls him a veteran of eighteen Dasaras, while the news reports count 16 earlier processions. News Karnataka reported that Abhimanyu, who led the 2024 procession, was relieved of the duty after turning 60, in accordance with a Supreme Court order. For the wider picture of the species, see Asiatic elephants in India.

The lights and the closing parade

The official portal says about 1,00,000 bulbs light the palace from 7 to 10 pm each evening of the festival, and until midnight on Sundays and on Vijayadashami. The illumination was inaugurated on 11 October at 6:30 pm. Karnataka Tourism gives the number as 97,000. The portal says the scheme was first lit a century ago.

The procession ends at Bannimantap, where the Torchlight Parade closes the festival. News Karnataka reported that tableaux from only 15 districts were permitted in 2026 and that the torchlight parade and a drone show were scheduled for 7:30 pm. The portal listed the parade at 7 pm. It scheduled the elephants’ return journey from the palace to Veeranahosahalli for 22 October, and the Chamundeshwari Rathotsava, the chariot festival on Chamundi Hill, for 24 October.