Musafir

The two places that i am going to mention in this post are rarely visited. This may be due to two reasons, lack of information and reaching the place may be dangerous as not many people venture out there..

However, behind the elephant’s stable, there is a plantain grove. There is a small gate made of wood right next to the stable. We need to go through the gate and  cross the grove. It is a nice walk of nearly two kilometres under the trees. We then reach an open field filled with thorny bushes. Just at a distance we see a small ruined Siva temple. We can recognize it as a Siva temple only on the basis of the construction and the carvings on its pillars. 200 yards from the Siva temple, we come to the Parsvanatha Temple. A watchman of the Archaeological Survey of India lead me to this place based on my enquires in their office about the place.

Parsvanatha Temple: Another example of the religious tolerance and respect, this Jain temple was consecrated sometime in the 15th century by Sri Krishnadevaraya. There is an inscription in the temple confirming this point. One can easily recognize a Jain temple of the olden days. Their roof is flat; they have pillars similar to Siva shrine, but the design is very simple.

The Parsvanatha temple seems a very simple shrine from outside. It has a big entrance and there is a pillared hall and a small room before the inner sanctum. The pillars are normal without any carvings on it, a typical feature of a Jain Temple. The small hall is very dark with a platform on either side with small caveats to hold idols. The inner sanctum has a stone pedestal for the idol, which of course is missing.

Although there are only two Jain temples in the Hampi area, the inscriptions suggest that the people of Hampi were not only ardent believers of non - violence, but also respected and followed them.

Moving on further, there is another plantain grove through which we need to pass. Just after we reach the clearing, there is a Vishnu temple which is totally in ruins now. But it must be a well maintained temple in the olden days, considering the size of the doors and the halls inside. This temple has three halls before the inner sanctum and excavation work is still going on inside. The inner walls of the temple have good designs carved on them. Moving further into the thorny open land we see a small temple and beside it, is the important place i was talking about.

Srinagarada Hebbagilu: As the name suggests (Hebbagilu means main door), this is one of the entrances to the Vijayanagar empire. It is large with raised platforms. This entrance should have been well protected. There are fortified walls on the inner side of the entrance on both the sides making it a pathway with walls on either side. There are platforms on either side of the entrance for the soldiers to guard. The doors must have been really huge and of stone. The whole entrance structure is plain except for a few carvings. 

There are no other temples outside of the entrance and you can find small pillared halls in the rocky hills nearby. They should have been used by the travellers or shepherds. One beautiful thing that we see are three small stone huts made on the top of a distant hill. Even though there are smaller shrines on the inside, they are in complete ruins and should be avoided for fear up reptiles.

Any trip to Hampi should not be completed without visiting this place, as it gives a lot of pleasure to visit the main entrance of the mighty kingdom.

We turn back and move along the same path till we reach the elephant stable. We take a small left turn and from there we can reach the beginning of the Temple Street, which is the Ranga Temple.