Hadagali taluk takes its name from its headquaters town. There are several stories in circulation regarding the origin of its name.The full name of the village is Huvina Hadagali.Huvu means flower; Hadaga means boat and Halli means village.Therefore it is a “village of flower boat”.It is believed that when the city of Vijayanagara flourished flowers needed for temples and palace were floated down from Tungabadhra from this place.As if to confirm this even today it can be seen number of old wells and gardens in this place.
Hadagalli: the full name of village is Huvinahadagalli, and the derivation of the word is said to be from Huvina, the adjectivation of the Canaries hu, a flower; hadaga, a boat; and halli, a village; meaning “ the village of the flower-boats”; the story being that in the days when the city of Vijayanagar still flourished flowers for its temples and palaces were floated down the Tungabhadra from this place. The tale receives some confirmation from the fact that the village contains a number of old wells and is still known for its gardens, betel, and plantains. It is a pleasant village and reputed most healthy; is the head-quarters of the taluk and union, and contains a well-built reading-room erected from public subscriptions, a sub-registrar’s office, a police-station and a recently-erected D.P.W. inspection bungalow. The population is 5,281.
Its chief interest lies in its temples. Two of these , the black stone Chalukyan temples to Kalleshwara and Kesavaswamy, are described and depicted in detail in Mr. R3ea’s Chalukyan Architecture above mentioned. They cannot compare in richness of detail with those at Bagli, Magalam or Hirehadagalli. Neither of them were finished. The tower in the former is incomplete and in the latter the exterior blocks of the bas and the jamb and lintel bands of the doors are left uncared, though the original intention was evidently to decorate them. The delicate carving in both of them has been greatly spoiled by wanton chipping and by frequent coats of most tenacious whitewash . the Kalleshwara temple is now included in the list of buildings conserved by Government. There is an inscription on a detached stone standing against the outside of its southern wall.
When the wall of the old fort was demolished in 1866, two temples were discovered built up in it. Worship is now performed in both of them. The image in one, that dedicated to Yogi Narayanaswamy , is of black stone and quite exquisite carved. Both are Chalukyan in aspect, and have the perforated stone window on each side of the shrine door which are characteristic of that style, but the carving in both is pitifully clogged with whitewash. In the Hanuman temple opposite the taluk cut cherry the present chairman of the union has recently placed for safety the two images of Ganesa figured in plates 1xxvii. And xcvi. Of Mr. Rea’s book above referred to, which formerly were standing in the open in the village.
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Though Hadagalli is one of the four “western taluks” of the district, where red and mixed soils usually greatly predominate, a tract in its southern corner comprising nearly one-third of its area is covered with black cotton-soil. Of the remainder, mixed soils occupy about two-thirds and red land one-third. It is one of the flattest taluks in the district, for its many undulations are of the long and low variety and it is only in the two places in the south where the extremities of the Mallappanbetta and Kallahalligudda ranges run into it that it can be said to be broken by real hills. The whole of it drains ultimately into the Tungabhadra, the eastern half by way of the Chikka Hagari. It is perhaps the healthiest part of the district.
Statistics relating to the taluk will be found in the separate Appendix. The abrupt decline which occurred in the number of its inhabitants between 1891 and 1901 was due to the fact that in the former year the census fell upon a date on which large crowds of pilgrims from Bombay and Mysore were assembled at the great festival at Mailar and consequently the population as then enumerated was greatly above the normal. As many as nine-tenths of the people speak Canarese. Jains number nearly four hundred, a slightly higher figure than in any other taluk. The weaving industry at Hampasagaram and Tambasrahalli is referred to in Chapter VI.
Hadagalli taluk shres with Harapanahalli the peculiarity of being practically the only part of the Presidency in which any examples of the Chalukya an style of architecture have been found. Outside these two taluks, the only instances of the style at present on record are the temples at Ambali in kudligi, at Peddatumbalam in Adoni and at Kambaduru, near the southern frontier of the Kalyandurg taluk of Anantapur. Examples abound, however, in Mysore and Dharwar. In Hadagalli taluk, temples built in this style occur at Hadagalli, Hirehadagalli, and Magalam, and, in Harapanahalli, at Bagali, Halsavasgalu, Kuruvatti and Nilagunda. All of these lie within a circle with a radius of twelve miles and they have been described in detail, with numerous plans and drawings, in Mr. Rea’s Chalukyan Architecture2 Some accounts of each of them will be found in the notices of these various Places below, and a slight description of the style and its peculiarities may be given here once for all. As has already been seen1, the Western Chalukyasm, after whom this form of architecture has been named, were originally Jains and later Hindus, and though the style appears2 to have had its origin in the earlier from of faith, and so retains traces of Jain influence, its situation, locally, midway between the Dravidian and northern styles led it to occasionally borrow features and forms from both. In its essentials, it remains none the less, an individual and distinct style. Its towers do not follow the “ pine-apples like the gopuras of the well-known temples in the southern districts, but ascend in steps and are pyramidal. The plan of the shrines is sometimes (though not in Bellary) star-shaped, instead of square as in Dravidian style. The pillars have none of the brackets so characteristic of those in the south and are similar in outline. Finally, pierced stone slabs are used for windows, a method followed in no other style.
But what strikes the observer as being most characteristic is the extraordinary richness, power, delicacy and finish of the stone carving in these temples. It has been said 3 that “ no chased work in gold or silver could possibly be finer” and yet the ornament is very bold, being generally completely undercut and sometimes attached to the masonry by the slenderest of stems some of the pillars bear signs of having been turned on some sort of lathe. The material used is pot-stone or steatite and was probably obtained from the disused quarries which are still to be seen at Nilagunda and at An guru on the Tungabhadra, five miles from Hirehadagalli. This is said to be soft when first quarried and to harden on exposure to the air. It weathers into varying beautiful shades of brown, and yet is so little affected by exposure that the details of the work remain as sharp as the day they were fashioned. The finest work in the group is perhaps to be found in the pillars of the big mantapam at Bagali, the ceilings at Magalam and the doorways and exterior at Hirehadagalli. The Halavagallu temple is the least ornate of the series. Mr. Re considers thet the earliest of the temples is that at Bagali and that they are all of approximately the sazme period and were probably consteucted during the twelfth century. An inscription at Bagli, since deciphered, shows however that the temple there was in existence before 1018 A.D.and further evidence on the point will doubtless be eventually derived from the other inscriptions within them. Local tradition has it that they are all the work of a well-known architect called Jakkanachari, regarding whom several miraculous stories are told. Several of the temples are unfinished and it may be that work on them was interrupted by the downfall of the Western Chalukyan dynasty in 1189. The carving in more than one of them has been wantonly damaged and chipped and it is often almost hidden under the coasts of whitewash with which the present –day pujari delights to smear the temples entrusted to his charge.
Cholam and korra are the staple crops of the Hadagalli taluk, but cotton is raised on quite a considerable area in the south of it and , s in the other western taluks, castor is extensively grown. The large acreage of horse-gram, a crop which will grow on the poorest land with the lightest land is lower than in any other taluk show, however, that taluk is not a fertile one.
The under mentioned are among the more notable places within it:-
Bellahunishi: Twelve miles south-west of Hospet along the main road to Dharwar: travelers’ bungalow: population 778. In the limits of Vallabhapuram, one of its hamlets, is the Vallabhapuram anicut across the Tungabhadra already referred to above1 under “ Irrigation.” An inscription on a stone near by states that it was built in A.D. 1521 by Krishna Deva Raya of Vijayanagar.
Devagondsnahalli: Three mile south of Hadagalli. Population 1,082. Mr. Bruce Foote says2 “ An interesting outcrop of a true pebbly conglomerate with quartzite matrix is to be seen on a low hill just south of Dagunahalli (two miles south of Huvina Hadagalli). It is much hidden by red soil, but where exposed much broken up into small pits like diamond digger’s pits, and near the western end of the end among the pits I observed two small platforms neatly edged with Jumps of stone and strongly resembling the sorting platforms used by the diamond diggers at Banganapalli. Despits of many inquiries through the taluk Officials, I could gin no information about this possible old diamond working: nobody had ever heard of it. The place has, however, an unmistakable resemblance to a diamond digging, and the pebbly conglomerate is quite sufficiently like to the Banaganapalli conglomente to render it quite probable that the pits and platforms are genuine traces of the work of a diamond prospecting party in former but not very remote times
The taluk is bounded on the south by the Harpanahalli tauk of Davanagere district, on the north by Mundargi and Sirahatti of Gadag district,on the east by the Hagaribommanahalli taluk and on the west by Haveri and Ranebennur taluks of Haveri district.
The geographical area of the taluk is 948 sq.km. This taluk occupies sixth place both in area and population.
HADAGALLI:- The area of the taluk has been computed to be 623 square miles. In shape it may be described as an irregular parallelogram with an average length of 32 miles and a breadth of 20 miles. The taluk is in general flat with a gradual fall to the north. There are a few small and unimportant hills in the south near Adavi Mallanakerra. The soil is chiefly of the red and mixed description, and only about 9 per cent, of the total area is black soil. Very little of it is irrigated
Places of Interest
Hirehadagalli: elevenmiles south-west of Hadgalli. Population 4, 153,. Contains one of the best of the black stone Chalukyan temples which are found in this part of the country. The material for this was probably obtained from the quarry at Anguru on the Tungabhadra, west-north-west of the village. The building is described to. Its chief beauties are the carving on two of the doorways and on parts of the exterior walls. In the bay on the north wall, for example, “every detail of the carved work is as minutely finished as jewellery.” It is on the list of buildings selected for conservation by Government.
Holalu: In the south- west corner of the taluk; police-station; population 3,194. Famous among the native population for the beautiful image of Anantasayana, or Vishnu sleeping on the serpent, which it possesses. This is carved in black stone with a power and finish quite out of the ordinary. A drawing of it will be found in Plate XV of Mr. Rea’s book. It was apparently executed elsewhere and brought here, as stone of the kind of which it is made is not procurable locally. For the popular legend connecting it with the curious shrine at Anantasainagudi in Hospet taluk, see the account of that place below (p.258). The little shrine which now stands over it was put up by the villagers in the seventies at the suggestion of M.R.Ry. Venkatachalam Pantulu, then Deputy Collector of the western tluks, to protect it from damage and the weather.
Kogali: Four miles north by west of the tri-junction of the three taluks of Hadagalli and Kudligi. Population 3,489. In olden days it was a place of some importance, being the capital of a sub-division (called “the Kodligi five-hundred” and corresponding to the present Hadagalli and Harapanahalli taluks) of the “ Nolambavadi thirty-two thousand,” which was a Pallava province from about the middle of the 7th century to about the end of the 10th century. The village was also apparently once a considerable Jain centre. There is a Jain temple in it which is still called “ the basti.” Near this is a Jain image, in the usual posture of abstraction and contemplation, which is more then life size. There are other Jain relics else where in the place, and further examples are reported from the neigh bouring village of Nelikudiri, Kannehalli, Kogalisamukodihalli. In and near the basti are a number of inscriptions, and these and the records in the Bagali temple in Harapanahalli temple referred to below give us particulars of some of the various chiefs who ruled the Kogali five-hundred. In A.D. 944-45 it was governed by a Chalukya feudatory of the Rashrakuta king Krishna III and in 956-57 by one of the chiefs of that dynasty. After the Chalukyas recovered their sovereignty in 973 it was ruled in 987-88 by one Aryavarman and in 992-93 by Adityavarman. In 1018 a Pallava feudatory of the Chalukyas called Udaysditya, who boasted the euphonious surname of Jagadekamalla-Nolamba-Pallava-Permanadi, was in charge of it and in 1068 it was ruled by Jayasimha, younger brother of the ruling Chalukya king, Somesvara II. The Kogali inscriptions also record gifts to the Jana temple of Chenna-Parsva in the village by the Hoysala ruler Vira-Ramananatha in 1275 and 1276 and to the Viirabhadra temple by Achytutaraya of Vijananagar.
Magalam: A mile from the Tungabhadra and west by south of Hadagalli; police-station population 2,759. Noted for its Chalukyan temple of black soapstone, dedicated to Venugopalaswamy, or Krishna with the flute. This consists of three shrines opening on to a central mantpam. The three doorways leading from the main mantapam, especially that on the west, are exquisite in design and workmanship and the ceilings are probably the finest in the whole series of Chalukyan temples in the district. Mr. Rea’s book contains many drawing of the building. It is now on the list of those conserved by Government.
Mailar: A mile from the Tungabhadra in the extreme south-western corner of the taluk. Population 1,722. The village is famous throughout the district for the annual festival held at the temple there every February, at which is uttered a cryptic of the coming year.
The temple is dedicated to Siva in his from Mallari or Mallahari, meaning ‘ the defeat of Malla.’ The story connected with this name (see the Mallari malamtmya; there are, as usual, many variants of it) is that a demon called Mallasura ( Malla-asura, ‘the demon Mall’) and his brother, having by severe penances extracted from Brahma a promise that they should never be harmed by any being in any from then existing , began to greatly harass the rashes. The gods were appealed to and siva put on a new from, so as to circumvent Brahma’s promise, and taking with him forces t o the number of seven crores, also in new forms which had never before served in an army (such as dogs), warred with Mallasura and his brother for ten long days and at length slew them both with his bow and overcame their followers. The gods and rishis were in transports at his triumph and joined in fore telling unbroken prosperity as the fruit of it.
The ceremonies and rites at the festival from a curios sort of miracle-play representative of this ‘war in heaven’ and its result. The pilgrims to the festival go about shouting Elukoti! (seven crores !) instead of the name of the god as usual, and the goravas-the special name for men (and women ) who have dedicated themselves to this temple in the curious manner prevalent in the western taluks-dress themselves up in blankets and run about on all fours, barking and pertending that they are some of Siva’s army of dogs. After residing for ten days (the period during which siva fought with Mallasura and his brother) on a hillock outside the village, the god returns. He is met half-way by the goddess, his wife, who comes to congratulate him on his success, and the two remain for some time at the victory is represented by the propheey or karanikam. It is pronounced on this tenth day, and all the thousands of people present crowd round the place where the god and goddess have halted.
A huge wooden bow, about ten feet long, symbolice of that with which siva slew Mallasura, is brought and placed on end. A Kuruba (the sameman has performed the ceremony for many years in succession) who has fasted for the past week steps forward and receives the bendication of the dharmakarta. He then climbs partly up the bow, being supported by those nearest him. For a minute or two looks in a rapt manner to the four points of the compass, then begains shuddering and trebling as a sing that the divine afflatus is upon him, and then calls out “Silence!” the most extraordinary and compete silence immediately falls upon the great crowd of pilgrims, every one waiting anxiously for the prophecy. After another minute’s pause and again gazing up wards to the heavens, the Kuruba pronounces the word or sentence which foretells the fate of the coming year, invariably following it with the word Parak!meaning ‘Hark ye,’or ‘Take ye note.’
The original edition of this Gazetter states that in the year before the Mutiny the prophecy was “ the white-ants are risen against.” Latterly, at any rate, the sentence has cither been of crops. A few instances are;-“ Serpent will enter ants’ hill”! “ Lighting will strike the sky “ ! “Pleasure”! “ Equal oceans.” A karnikam is also pronouneed in much the same manner at the Mallari temples at Devaragudda in the Ranibennur taluk of the Dharwar district and at Hosappatidevaragudda, hamlet of Neraniki in Alur taluk, and also Dasara day at the little temple of Mailar Lingappa in the north-west corner of Harpanahalli village.
Two other ceremonies at the Mailar feast (which are imitated at the festival at Harapanahalli) are perhaps worth noting. They were probably originally intened to be symbolic of the prodigics performed by Siva’s army in the war with Mallasura. In the first, a stout chain is fastened to a slab of stone in the temple. A number of the goravs collect together and are blessed by the dharma kart. After howling and barking like dogs for a short while they seize the chain and break it in two. Thesecond ceremony consists in a man driving through the small of this leg, above the ankle, a pointed wooden peg about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, pulling it right through the hole it makes, and then passing a chain through the hole. Very little bleeding follows, and the man is rewarded by the faithful. The supposition is the he has trained himself for the feat by gradually, through a considerable period of time, driving larger and pegs through the same part of his leg until he can manage quite a big one without serious inconvenience. He at any rate declines to drive in tpeg any where except at this one place.
The Mailar festival is important as a cattle fair, though less so than that at Kuruvatti in the Harapanahalli taluk which follows it in March of each year. The cattle brought for sale are mostly of the mysore breed, or nearly allied to it, often closely resembling the well-known Amrat Mahal animals.
Mallappan Betta: is the chief peak of the Mallappangudda rage of hills, which are of Dharwar rock. It stands three miles south-west of Sogi, measured in a direct line, nd is 3,177feet deep in which has been placed an image to Mudi Mallappa, or “ ancient Mallappa,” the god of the hill. Worship is regularly paid to it. The view from the top of the peak is well worth the climb. On a clear day the hills as far as Rayadrug can be identified.
Modalukatti: a hamlet of Kombali, situated on the bank of the Tungabhadra, seven miles north-north-west of IIadagalli. The name means “ first building” and the village was so called, says the story, because it was the scene of the first of the Vijayanagar kings’ attempts to construct an cut across the river. The remains of the old dam are still standing and still hold up a considerable body of water. The channel which runs through the breach in the middle of the ancient is the favorite water of the local anglers in the hot weather.
Sogi: Six miles south-east of Hadagalli, measured in a direct line. Population 2,683. Known for its melons, which are considered to be of special sweetness and are very large, some of them weighing as much as 40 Ibs. Mr. Rea’s book mention the Chalukyan temple made of black stone which is in this village but gives no description or drawings of it.
Tambarahalli: Situated about midway between Bellahunishi and Hampasagaram, police-station ; population 2,729. The silk-weaving carried on in this village and its next neighbor Bachigodanahalli has already been referred to. The temple on the bare hummock of rock which is notice cable so many miles in every direction round is the Tambarahalli village temple. It is not worth a visit. The wet land of the village is irrigated by a channel dug annually from the chikka Hagari ( the only one of its kind all along the river), while within the village limits is the one and only anicut across that river. Water Tken from this irrigates land in Bachigondahalli and however, a proposal to build a dam across the Chikka Hagari at Nelikudiri, and should this be eventually carried into effect Tambarahalli will be one of the villages benefited
.
Kogali:
Kogali village was once a Jaina centre.One can find Jaina temple here with an image of Teerthankarain in the posture of contemplation.
Kuruvatti:
This village is situated on the bank of Tungabadhra at a distance of 36 kms from Hadagali.Every year during car festival cattle fair is conducted with much fanfare.
Magala:
Magala village which is 25 kms from Hadagali is noted for Chalukyan temple dedicated to Venugopalaswamy.
Mylara:
This village is situated at a distance of 33 kms. from Hadagali and 2 kms. from Tungabadhra river.The temple here is dedicated to Lord Shiva in the form of Mailara.Mailara means defeater of Malla.Mylara Jathra is very popular in and around Hadagali taluk.This annual festival attract a large number of devotees from all over the state.
