Sirsi Marikamba Temple is a
Hindu temple
A Hindu temple, also known as Mandir, Devasthanam, Pura, or Kovil, is a sacred place where Hindus worship and show their devotion to Hindu deities, deities through worship, sacrifice, and prayers. It is considered the house of the god to who ...
dedicated to Marikamba Devi (
Durga Devi
Durga (, ) is a major Hinduism, Hindu Devi, goddess, worshipped as a principal aspect of the mother goddess Mahadevi. She is associated with protection, strength, motherhood, destruction, and wars.
Durga's legend centres around combating ev ...
), located in
Sirsi, Karnataka, It is also known as Marigudi. It was built in 1688. Sirsi Shri Marikamba Devi is the "elder sister" of all Marikamba Devi's in Karnataka.
Features
The temple's façade, a 19th-century addition, is painted blue. After one enters through the façade, there is courtyard in the middle, which has
cloister
A cloister (from Latin , "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open Arcade (architecture), arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle (architecture), quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cat ...
s surrounding it. The cloisters are filled with images of deities from the
Hindu epics. The changes made inside the temple have hidden any evidence of older structures. The
sanctum sanctorum has the central image of a fierce form of the goddess
Durga, multi-armed (eight shoulders
), riding a tiger and killing a demon. It is believed that the image was retrieved from a pond on the road to
Hangal
Hangal, formerly known as 'Viratanagara', is a historic town in Karnataka. It is away from Hubli through National Highway 766E (India), NH 766E.
Location
Hangal lies about south of the city of Hubli-Dharwad, about west of the Tungabhadra ri ...
. The temple has very special paintings of murals in
Kaavi art, an art form which was popular in the coastal
Konkan
The Konkan is a stretch of land by the western coast of India, bound by the river Daman Ganga at Damaon in the north, to Anjediva Island next to Karwar town in the south; with the Arabian Sea to the west and the Deccan plateau to the eas ...
region of Karnataka. In this art form, now extinct, the top plastered layer of the mural was first dyed with a red pigment, which when removed revealed a lower white layer of plaster over which the murals were created.
Worship
The main priest at the temple belongs to the
Vishvakarma (Vishvabrahmin) community.
When
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...
visited Sirsi in 1934 he refused to visit the temple, as animal sacrifice was a prevalent ancient practice at the temple; the sacrifice was in the form of offering of he-buffalo as a sacrifice to appease the goddess.
A he-buffalo was specially bred for offering as a sacrifice to the deity during the biennial
Rathayatra (chariot festival). Following Gandhi's protest, there was a successful movement in the town to abolish animal sacrifice spearheaded by Keshwain, chief trustee of the temple, in association with Vitthal Rao Hodike, a teacher and dedicated
Gandhian of the town.
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Gallery
See also
* Chamundeshwari Temple, Mysore
* Mookambika Temple, Kollur
* Annapurneshwari Temple, Horanadu
* Yellamma Temple, Saundatti
References
{{Reflist
External links
www.marikamba.com
Hindu temples in Uttara Kannada district
Religious buildings and structures completed in 1688
Durga temples
Devi temples in Karnataka
Tourism in Karnataka
1688 establishments in Asia