I was at my first Republic Day parade today & was pleasantly surprised to see the Karnataka tableau inspired by the Belur Temple. The float had the Hoysala Emblem at the front & the rest of the it was designed as the temple complex. So I thought its only apt that I should write about the Belur Temple today.
Located in the Hasan disctrict of Karnataka- this temple is one of most impressive achievement of art & sculpture in the country.
Built by the Hoysalas around 1100 AD this magnificient structure in black stone has beautiful sculptures inspired from a variety of sources-bharatnatyam,mohiniattam, hoysala emblem,kamasutra etc.
See the attached image for other details & history of Belur temple.
The interesting thing that really struck me was that there is a “prototype” of the temple right within the same complex. The prototype is almost the same size as the temple… my guess is that the scale is about 0.7:1 Imagine how particular the Hoysala ruler would have been- to have comissioned an almost full scale protoype before giving a green signal to the main temple.
There is a KSRTDC guest house in Hasan very close to the temple that provides good accomodation.
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