Legends & Traditions

THERE are traditions associating parts of the Chitradurga Legend and district with stories belonging to tlie Dwapara age. Before Tradition the excavations at Chandravalli, near Chitradurga, were made in 1929, the old inhabitants of Chitradurga and the people of the neighboring villages were encouraged to narrate the stories about the place. One of the stories told by them connects Chitradurga with the Mahabharata. It is said that long ago in the Dwapara age, there lived on Chitradurga hill a man-eating giant named Hidimbasura, who had proved himself a source of great terror to all the people in the neighborhood. To this place came the five Pandava princes with their mother Kunti in the course of their exile and there ensued a great duel between the Pandava prince Bhima and the Rakshasa, Hidimba. Hidimba was slain and the tradition has it that two of his teeth, looking very much like elephant molar teeth, have been preserved in the Hidimbeshwara and Siddheshwara temples on the hill. It is also said that it was about this time that six lingas were set up, namely, Hidimbeshwara, Dharmeshwara, Bhimesliwara, Phalguneshwara, Nakuleshwara and Sahadeveshwara. Further, according to Mahabharata, Bhima married Hidimbi, sister of the Rakshasa Hidimba, and had by her a son, Ghatotkacha. Later, the tradition says, the country came under the sway of Chandrahasa, the pious king of Kuntala, whose capital was Kuntalanagara or Kuppattur in the north of the Shimoga district. It is supposed that the town of Chandravalli got its name from this king, Chandrahasa.

Another place in the Chitradurga district that is associated with an Asura is Harihar. According to a story, there lived at this place a Daitya named Guhasura, who by pleasing the gods, Hari and Hara, with his penance, had obtained a boon from them that he should not be killed by either of them ; he was finally killed by them -when they appeared in the composite form of Harihara (Hari + Hara) . It is said that it is after this episode that the place came to be called Harihara.

Lastly, there is a copper-plate grant 1 at Bhimanakatte matha, now Tirthahalli, in the Shimoga district, supposed to have been made by the king, Janamejaya, who was the great-grandson of Arjuna. In this grant which is dated in the year 89 in the Yudhisthira era and which is in the Sanskrit language and Nagari script but signed in comparatively modern Kannada characters, Janamejaya is represented as ruling in Kishkindha and making a gift, in the presence of the god Harihara, of the place on the Tungabhadra in which his great-grandfather, Yudhisthira, had rested. There are three other copper-plate grants coming from Gauj, Kuppagadde and Begur in this district 2 dealing with a simi­lar gift made by Janamejaya to the priests who had participated in the Sarpa-yaga or serpent-sacrifice performed by him in retalia­tion to the death of his father, Parikshita, as a result of a serpent bite 3 .

There is also a place in this district, which is connected with the story of Ramayana and that is the Jatinga Rarneshwara hill, near about Brahmngiri which is noted for its hoary past and great archaeological interest. It was here that Jatayu, the heroic bird, fell fighting with Ravana in its efforts to rescue Sita from him. From a distance on the south, the upper part of this hill presents the appearance of a colossal hawk, fallen on the hill with its wing half severed and its eyes running with tears, all in mortal agony. Perhaps it is this curious appearance of the hill that gave rise to this story.

From the above account, it appears as if this region was pre-eminently a land of Asuras in the age of the epics. Now who are these Asuras, Rakshasas or Daityas with some of whom, places in this district are connected ? According to tradition, they are demons ; but this meaning has to be rejected in the light of modern interpretations. It appears that such terms originally denoted peoples or tribes, some of them quite civilized but all of them not only outside but also positively opposed to the Brahminic religion. Just because these peoples were opposed to the Brahminic culture, they were depicted as demons in some Brahininic literature just as, for instance, the Chinese used to call Europeans as ' foreign devils ',4 and the continued use of these terms later led, in turn, to the attribution of evil characteristics to these peoples. In fact, we are told that older accounts did treat the Danavas, Daityas and Rakshasas as men and it is only in the later Brahminical literature that they have been treated as demons5. That these names express only the hatred of some Brahminic writers for these tribes is clear from the fact that even the Jains and Buddhists are treated in some texts as Asuras and Daityas.6 The tribes denoted by the names Asuras and Rakshasas appear to have been fairly civilized peoples. Various supernatural powers are attributed to them in the Epics and Puranas. Even now a tribe called Asura exists round about Chota-Nagpur.7 Asuras have also been identified by some writers with the Assyrians, an ancient civilized people of Western Asia.8 As for the Rakshasas, it is said, they had a great kingdom in the South, the capital of which has been described in glowing terms in the Ramayana".

Courtesy : Gazetteer of India, Chitradurga District, 1967.