Alupa rule inscriptions found in Veeranarayana temple, Kulashekara

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, Feb 11, 2019: Efforts to document the old Veeranarayana Temple by the Religious and Charitable Endowments Department has led to the discovery of inscriptions related to Veera Kulashekara Alupendra, the longest ruling king of Alupa dynasty which ruled the region in the 12th Century.

The department took the services of Associate Professor of History and Archaeology from Mulki Sundar Ram Shetty College, Shirva, T. Murugeshi, to document the temple that was left out of its list of temples in 2003.  The department is now trying to include such temples in the list.

Murugeshi came to the temple with a team of history students from his college on Feb 10, Sunday morning. The team found two inscriptions, one big and one small, inside the premises of the old temple.

The team took time to clean oil deposits on the two inscriptions before taking copies of the inscriptions on white paper.

Going through the copies and after close observation of the inscriptions,  Murugeshi said that the palaeographical feature of the inscriptions shows that they go back to the 12th Century.

The inscriptions have references to Bhuvanashraya, the place of Alupas in Kulashekara, which was one of the three kingdoms of the dynasty.  Murugeshi said that the temple was built by Veera Kulashekara in the 12th Century.

While a statue of the presiding deity was locally known as Veeranarayana, iconographically it looked like that of Lord Janardhana.

Vishwajeet, a local resident, told the team about some remnants of Bhuvanashraya place in the vicinity. He expressed the need for a study of these remnants.

Sudhakar, an inspector in the Endowment Department, accompanied the team.