The Nine Hindu Temples at Pattadakal in Karnataka Joined Northern and Southern Building Styles in the 7th and 8th Centuries, and UNESCO Has Listed Them Since 1987

Pattadakal, a village on the Malaprabha river in Bagalkot district, Karnataka, has nine Hindu temples and a Jain shrine, and UNESCO has listed the group as World Heritage since 1987. The World Heritage Centre says the site shows the high point of an eclectic art that, in the 7th and 8th centuries under the Chalukya dynasty, achieved “a harmonious blend of architectural forms from northern and southern India.” The inscribed area is 5.56 hectares, with a buffer zone of 113.48 hectares.

The two forms show on the skyline. An ICOMOS evaluation written for UNESCO in 1987 describes the northern influence as shikharas (the towers over a sanctum) with a square plan and curved edges, as at the Galaganatha and Kashi Vishveshvara temples. The southern type, it says, has complex, storied roofs. India’s own entry for UNESCO’s Tentative List calls the two families the Rekha-nagara and the Dravida vimana. Britannica dates the first Western Chalukya rule over the Deccan to 543 to 757, and the dynasty’s builders used both families at Pattadakal, side by side and in one case inside a single building.

A village whose name is read as “coronation”

The Bagalkot district administration puts Pattadakal about 23 km from Badami and about 10 km from Aihole. Those three places along the Malaprabha are where the Chalukya kings built. Pulakeshin I, who began his reign in 543 and took the hill fort of Vatapi (Badami), is described by Britannica as “a petty chieftain of Pattadakal.”

The old name is Pattada Kisuvolal, which ICOMOS translates as “City of the Crown Rubies”. J. F. Fleet, who edited the site’s inscriptions in 1881, read patada as “of the crown” or “of the coronation”. He thought kisu might mean ruby, and that the kal in Pattadakal is the Kannada word for stone, which would make the name a stone of coronation. A holy place for royal coronation is how the Archaeological Survey of India describes the village.

Pattadakal was briefly the third capital of the Chalukya kingdom while the Pallavas held Badami, ICOMOS adds, a period it gives as 642 to 655. The Pallava capture of Vatapi falls within 641 to 647 in Britannica’s account, and the Chalukyas had recovered by 655.

Aihole and Badami tried it first

India’s Tentative List entry describes a sequence of experiments that “commenced at Aihole, continued at Badami and culminated at Pattadakal.” Prototypes of 16 types of free-standing temples and four types of rock-cut shrine were developed at Badami and Aihole, the entry says, and reached their most mature form at Pattadakal. For the caves, it says the skills developed at Ajanta were carried over into the Hindu cave temples at Aihole and Badami. Ajanta is covered in Ajanta and Ellora: carved from rock.

Aihole, in the Bagalkot administration’s words, is the “cradle of Hindu temple architecture”, with about 125 temples in 22 groups, and the Meguti temple of 634 is its only dated monument. The king whose court poet left the inscription there is the subject of Pulakeshin II and the Chalukyas. Both tower families were already in use at those two places. On the district pages the Hucchimalli temple at Aihole has a northern rekha-nagara tower over its sanctum, and the Malegitti Shivalaya at Badami has a Dravidian one. The Tentative List ties Badami to Pattadakal directly, saying the plan of the Upper Shivalaya at Badami was followed in the later Galaganatha temple.

The Sangamesvara and its neighbours, and a temple that mixes both towers

The Survey names the Sangamesvara as the oldest temple at Pattadakal. Vijayaditya Satyasraya built it, and the Survey gives his reign as 697 to 733 (ICOMOS gives 696). Its main vimana has three storeys, the Survey says. ICOMOS puts the Sangamesvara and the Mallikarjuna among temples “of a pure Dravidian style”. In the Survey’s reading the Sangamesvara, Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna show southern elements, as crystallised in the Pallava temples of the time.

The Kadasiddhesvara and Jambulingeswara are attributed to the 7th century. The Galaganatha followed about a century later in the rekha nagara prasada style, and the Bagalkot administration says it was probably never completed. Last to be built in early Chalukyan style, the Survey says, was the Kasivisvesvara.

The Papanatha stands apart, towards the village. Two rooms serve worshippers, ICOMOS says. On the west is the main sanctuary under “a powerful tower in the northern style”, and on the east a smaller room whose roof is crowned with miniature buildings in the purest Dravidian style. Specialists find many contradictory references in its niches, pediments and arcature, ICOMOS says, and its carved illustration of the Ramayana holds it together. Bagalkot district dates it to about 680, and the ICOMOS evaluation gives no date.

The Virupaksha, built to mark a victory at Kanchi

UNESCO calls the Virupaksha the masterpiece of the group, built about 740 by Queen Lokamahadevi to commemorate her husband’s victory over the kings from the South. In its 2002 report to UNESCO the Survey gives circa 740 to 745. Fleet’s notes on the gateway inscriptions say the temple was built for Lokamahadevi, queen of Vikramaditya II, in celebration of her husband having conquered Kanchi, the Pallava capital, three times. Its original name was Lokesvara.

The sources give different dates for the war. ICOMOS puts Vikramaditya II’s victory over the Pallavas in 731. Britannica says he captured Kanchi in 742 but spared it. At Kanchi, a Kannada inscription in the Kailasanatha temple records that after the conquest a king Vikramaditya returned the Rajasimhesvara temple’s property to the god instead of confiscating it. E. Hultzsch, who edited it for Epigraphia Indica, assigned it with great probability to Vikramaditya II because the Wokkaleri plates say that king made gifts to that temple. The Pattadakal inscription’s editor adds that the same plates say Vikramaditya II entered Kanchi and did not destroy it.

In the Survey’s description the Virupaksha is the earliest extant temple complex in the Chalukyan series: a tall vimana with pillared halls on its axis and subsidiary shrines around a court, behind a wall with gateway towers at front and back, “all designed and completed at one time”. Along the top of the compound wall, it says, the decoration suggests a derivation from the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram. The plan, ICOMOS says, is cruciform, with three projecting porches, a three-storey tower, and wall niches filled with statues arranged to illustrate the great themes of Shaiva theology. In front stands a pavilion with a colossal black stone Nandi, the sacred bull, and ICOMOS wrote in 1987 that the ritual washing of the bull takes place there every morning.

Across the Pattadakal temples, the Survey lists ceiling panels of the nine planets, the guardians of the directions and the dancing Shiva, and wall niches of Lingodbhava, Ardhanarisvara and Varahavishnu. Narrative reliefs from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavata and Panchatantra are on the same list.

Two queens and a pillar dated by an eclipse

The Survey says Rani Trilokyamahadevi, another queen of Vikramaditya II, built the Mallikarjuna immediately after the Virupaksha and close to it. Smaller than the Virupaksha, it has a four-storeyed vimana. Bagalkot district says it was first called the Trailokeshwara.

A pillar inscription of Kirtivarman II, the son of Vikramaditya II, names both queens’ temples. Lokamahadevi, of the Haihaya (Kalachuri) race, built the Lokesvara, it says. Her younger sister by the same mother, Trailokyamahadevi, who was the mother of Kirtivarman II, built a Trailokyesvara. It also names the Vijayesvara, now the Sangamesvara. The editor dated the grants to 25 June 754 from the total solar eclipse of that day, which was visible across India.

The pillar was set up between the three shrines by a sculptor named Subhadeva for an Acharya named Jnanasiva, who had come from the north bank of the Ganges. The text is in Sanskrit, with a second copy in Nagari script. The editor wrote that this Nagari record and the Samangad grant gave the earliest examples of Nagari then obtained in western India.

A named architect, and a question about the south

Fleet’s reading of the gateway pillars names the builder as the sutradhari (master architect) Gunda, who was given an honour called mume-perjerepu and the name Tribhuvanacharya. A second gateway inscription names Sarvasiddhi-Acharya, whom Fleet’s translation calls the most eminent sutradhari of “the southern country”. In the Survey’s periodic report, the inscriptions with artisans’ names, at the quarry and at the temples, are called noteworthy.

The sources read that phrase differently. ICOMOS wrote that two inscriptions show Vikramaditya II brought an architect and a team of sculptors from the south, and the Bagalkot administration says he brought sculptors from Kanchipuram. Sheelakant Pattar argues that the Kannada phrase means the southern part of the temple. On his reading Gunda was in charge of everything except that part, which Sarvasiddhi supervised. He says Sarvasiddhi’s pupil Revadi Ovajja built the southern part of the Papanatha with a northern-style tower, and that there is no temple with a northern Rekha-nagara tower in Pallava country. Pattar concludes that Sarvasiddhi knew both styles, and he cites Percy Brown among scholars who rejected Cousens’s view that a group of artists was brought to Pattadakal.

Pattar also lists sculptors who signed their work. Baladeva, son of Duggi Achari, carved a life-size door guardian from the pilaster itself on the Virupaksha’s southern porch, and also worked at the Papanatha.

From Pattadakal to Ellora

According to the Survey, the Virupaksha was influenced by the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram and later served as a model for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (757 to 783) when he carved the Kailasa at Ellora, covered in the Kailasa temple at Ellora. In Britannica’s account the Rashtrakutas replaced Kirtivarman II in 757. The last addition, the Survey says, was the Jain Narayana temple, with its two lower storeys in use, made under the Rashtrakuta king Krishna II in the 9th century. UNESCO’s text speaks of the 7th and 8th centuries, while the Survey’s 2002 statement of significance gives the 7th to 9th centuries under the Chalukya and Rashtrakuta dynasties.

What is listed, and what comes next

ICOMOS first advised in May 1987 that listing be deferred until more information arrived, noting that the nomination had no protective zones, recent photographs or conservation policy after 1958. Its October 1987 evaluation recommended inscription under criteria (iii) and (iv), and the Survey’s report gives the date of inscription as 11 December 1987.

Under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, the Survey is the sole custodian of the core zone. A 1992 notification declared the area up to 100 m from the protected limits prohibited, and a further stretch up to 200 m regulated, for mining and construction, and no new structure may go up in either without a no-objection certificate from the Survey. A 300 m buffer, the report says, holds the village, farmland and a state reserve forest. A UNESCO summary of the report gives about 132,886 visitors in 2001 to 2002. The report said a management plan was being prepared, with a museum in the sculpture shed and an information centre among the planned steps.

India submitted “Evolution of Temple Architecture, Aihole-Badami-Pattadakal” to UNESCO’s Tentative List on 9 February 2015, proposing the Aihole and Badami groups as an extension to Pattadakal. The entry counts six rock-cut caves and twenty-five temples across the three sites.