Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple

About Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple

The Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple in Gavipuram is a cave temple cut into a natural monolithic rock and dedicated to Lord Shiva as Gangadhareshwara — Shiva who holds the river Ganga in his matted hair. It is one of the oldest and most unusual temples in Bengaluru.

The forecourt is famous for its giant stone discs: two granite pillars carry huge circular discs representing the sun and the moon, and other monolithic pillars represent Shiva's damaru (drum) and trishula (trident). Two pillars carry carvings of Nandi seated. Inside the cave, besides the Shiva linga, there are shrines to some two dozen deities including Parvati, Ganesha, Murugan, Durga, Hanuman, Lakshmi-Narayana, Surya, Chandra and the Navagrahas. A unique idol of Agni, the fire god, with two heads, seven hands and three legs, is worshipped by devotees who believe it helps cure eye ailments.

The temple's most celebrated feature is its astronomical alignment. On Makar Sankranti in mid-January, the rays of the setting sun pass through an arch between the horns of the stone Nandi outside and fall directly on the Shiva linga in the inner sanctum for a few minutes. The sun lights the shrine around 13–16 January and again around 26 November–2 December. Lakhs of devotees gather every year to witness the moment. Maha Shivaratri and Makar Sankranti are the main festivals.

Local legend speaks of a tunnel inside the cave said to lead to Kashi. The temple is a protected monument under the Karnataka Ancient and Historical Monuments Act of 1961.

History

Tradition holds that the cave was first sanctified by the sages Gautama and Bharadwaja in the Vedic age. The temple as it stands today was built — or renovated — in the 16th century by Kempe Gowda I, the founder of Bengaluru, in thanksgiving after his release from five years of imprisonment by Rama Raya of Vijayanagara.

The temple caught the attention of British artists. The brothers Thomas and William Daniell painted it in 1792, James Hunter's painting of it was published in 1804, and a 1917 painting by J. B. MacGeorge called it 'The Umbrella Temple' after the great stone discs in the forecourt.