Trip to Savirakambha Basadi : The temple of a thousand Pillars

After visiting the Chaturmukha Basadi and the amazing statue of Gomateshwara ( Btw kudos to Matt for actually being able to pronounce it on yesterday's vidcast, Hehe) , we headed off to see the "Savirakambha Basadi" also known as "The temple of a thousand Pillars" (which is SO much more pronouncable) in a place called Moodabidri. Once again, all pictures were taken by my Nokia N82.



Moodabidri, sometimes described as the Varanasi of the jains, has 18 Jain basadis, although jains themselves are a minority population in the Dakshina Kannada district. This place consists mainly of followers of the Digambar sect; the most famous among them is the 1000 pillared Chandranatha Basadi popularly known as "Savirakambha Basadi".




The uniqueness is that no two pillars are identical. The devotees under the directions of the local ruler at that time - Devaraja Wodeyar of Nagamangala, built this in 1430 A.D. Figures of giraffes and Chinese dragons have been carved on sections of the Temple indicating the trade with Africa and China by the Jain Merchants of the time. The Temple is also called Hosa Basadi since the relief of the Temple always appears as "Hosa" which means new.



This has a powerful presence in the center of the Moodabidri. Three mandapas lead to the main sanctuary. These mandapas have a series of sloping tiered roofs, adapted to the heavy monsoon rainfall of the region. The main entrance, which faces east, opens into a superb monolithic pillar (mana-stambha) in front of the main doorway. The temple has a valuable collection of metal, jewel carved images of Jain tirthankars.



Unfortunately, photography wasnt allowed in this temple.But after travelling this far, I really really wanted to take a few pictures of the place and I honestly hope I do not offend anyone in posting it up here. So whatever pictures you see here, are all unfocussed spy shots with the N82 on Landscape mode.Unfortunately, you cant turn off the camera sound in the Asian N82, like you can in the European Models. Or the red led for that matter. So it made taking spy shots, a lot more harder. You can view them on my Facebook Album or below, on my Share on Ovi account :



-Teh Cj