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42, Bangalore, Chandra Gupta, God, Jain temple, meaning of life, monolith, philosophy, Shravanabelagola, Travel, Writing
For those of you who know about Shravanabelagola, it is the place of the world’s largest monolith stone statue – of the Jain saint Gomateshwara (no, He is not naked Buddha as many of us think). For those who do not know about it yet here is what Wikipedia has to say:” Shravanabelagola (Kannada: ಶ್ರವಣಬೆಳಗೊಳ Śravaṇabeḷagoḷa) is a city located in the Hassan district in the Indian state of Karnataka and is 158 km from Bangalore”- most part of the statement is true; it is not a city as mentioned, but a small beautiful village that’s about 50km from Hassan.
I drove down to Shravanabelagola about a month ago from Bangalore. I hate Bangalore for many reasons; to start with I work here (I’ve never liked any place that I lived in, you know, like Groucho’s joke). But if there is a reason for me to love Bangalore it’s the geographical proximity to many fascinating and relatively unknown historical places; for example: until recently I didn’t know Tipu Sultan’s birth place is around 30km from my house. Shravanabelagola is one such place – it has no relation to Bangalore or to Tipu Sultan, except that it is a weekend drive from Bangalore. I’ll try to start off like any other literature about this place does; Shravanebelagola = Shramana+Bela(White)+kola(Pond), meaning ‘White pond of Shramanas’ . Here is what I understand about who Shramanas are – in Jainism shramanas are those men who renounce everything they have to find the meaning of Life, Universe and Everything, in short they are Jain saints. Why ‘white pond’ – there is a pond in the middle of the village. So I gather whoever wanted to renounce everything they have got to know the deeper meaning of life, they chose this place (that has a pond in the middle of the village) and so the name. For those who dig a bit of history here is an interesting fact about Shravanabelagola: Chandragupta Maurya, the first emperor of unified India and the grandfather of Ashoka the Great meditated here after renouncing his kingdom, and starved to death (it is called Sallekhana in Jainism).
The Bangalore-Hassan drive is beautiful; the roads are great (very few times that I don’t crib about paying tax to the Indian govt.). Hassan-Shravanabelgola route is equally good. When you get closer to the town of Shravanabelagola, you could easily spot the towering naked statue of Gomateshwara. But keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel (yeah yeah, I know…), for the statue’s awe could kill you. I almost got myself killed trying to marvel at the statue when driving. The statue is about 60 feet tall, craftfully carved out of a single boulder. The statue is so awe-inspiring, that I climbed more that 500 steep steps to see the statue up close (for those who know me well enough- please believe me, I climbed all the way up. And for the rest, let us just leave it there…).
I am not gonna write about the history of who build the monument for whom, and make an interesting story boring; one could anyways get most of it from Mr. Wikipedia. But we could definitely reflect upon the significance of such a size and awe of the monument. When I stood below the statue, I was obviously thinking how small I was with respect to the statue, you know, it was like the Total Perspective Vortex thing from Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy – somebody build a 60 ft statue of a man (sorry, of God looking like a man) just to tell a man standing next to it, “you are nothing”. Looking at the peaceful face of the statue changed my perspective a bit, may be, it just reminds man that wherever he is, he can see God …all he has to do is open his eyes and see.
Shravanabelagola in one line: God… naked to you.
Upcoming post: Belur/Halebid , Hampi, Sikkim, Gokarna – one of these… when: depends on how much lazy I get..