Place · Kadamba capital · India
Banavasi
The ancient capital of the Kadamba dynasty at Banavasi in Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka, 170 kilometres from Mangalore — the 4-6th century capital of the first indigenous Kannada ruling dynasty founded by Mayura Sharma around 345 CE after his defeat of a Pallava force at Shriparvatha. Banavasi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in Karnataka with Satavahana-period origins and a Kadamba sacred-geography that threaded the Madhukeshwara Shiva temple (10th-century foundation on a pre-Kadamba shrine) as its ritual centre. The 10th-century Kadamba-period poem Kavirajamarga calls Banavasi the heart of Kannada cultural geography. The town's annual Kadambotsav festival (established 1980) celebrates the Kadamba heritage. ASI protection since 1917.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 14.550, 74.480
Connections (1)
- Succession in timeKeladi & Ikkeri
Banavasi and Ikkeri are forty kilometres apart in the Malnad and eleven hundred years apart in time: the Kadamba capital where written Kannada begins, and the Keladi Nayaka seat that outlived Vijayanagara. Both were chosen for the same reason — a defensible forest basin above the Kanara ghats — and the second controlled the pepper trade the first had only taxed.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Banavasi”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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