heritage/karkala-and-venur.jpg · 1200×800Karkala's Gommateshwara stands on a granite outcrop called Gommata Betta, 42 feet tall and cut from one block weighing over eighty tonnes. It was consecrated on 13 February 1432 by Veera Pandya Bhairarasa Wodeyar of the Santara line, at the urging of his teacher Lalitakirti. The model was plainly Shravanabelagola, four and a half centuries older. Its Mahamastakabhisheka comes round about every twelve years; the next is announced for February 2027.
Above the statue, on Chikkabetta, stands the Chaturmukha Basadi of 1586, built by Immadi Bhairarasa Wodeya. It is a sarvatobhadra temple — square, with a doorway on each of its four sides, so that the shrine is approached and seen equally from every direction. Life-size standing images of Aranatha, Mallinatha and Munisuvrata face outward within. Massive granite slabs form the flat roof, and the building's severity, without carving, is exactly what gives it its power.
Some twenty kilometres south-east, at Venur on the Phalguni river, a third colossus was raised in 1604 by Timmanna Ajila, a chief of the Ajila family, on the advice of the Bhattaraka of Moodbidri. Most Jain sources give its height as 35 feet; some accounts say 38. Seven small basadis surround it, the largest the Shantinatha or Kallu Basadi of 1489. Venur's Mahamastakabhisheka is also held about every twelve years, most recently in 2012.
