Place · Durga hill temple · India
Kanaka Durgā, Vijayawāda
The goddess temple on Indrakiladri hill above the Krishna river at Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, dedicated to Kanaka Durga (Durga-Lakshmi-Saraswati composite). The temple is one of the 18 Mahashakti Peethams and the chief goddess shrine of coastal Andhra. The hill is traditionally the ground on which Arjuna performed tapasya to obtain the Pashupata weapon from Shiva (Mahabharata Vana Parva). The temple's Dussehra festival each September-October draws about ten million pilgrims. The current structure is 15th-century with major 19th-century additions; the Durga Malleshwara pair of temples (goddess and consort Shiva) on the hilltop reflect the Shakta-Shaiva twinning characteristic of Andhra temple architecture.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.514, 80.609
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyUndavalli caves
Undavalli's rock-cut halls and the Kanaka Durga temple on Indrakeeladri face each other across the Krishna at Vijayawada, and both were cut or founded in the same early medieval centuries. Undavalli's lowest storey is Buddhist in plan and its upper ones Vaishnava; the hill opposite is a goddess seat. The region's religious transition is legible across one river crossing.
- Patronage networkKakinada
Arthur Cotton's anicuts on the Godavari at Dowleswaram and on the Krishna at Vijayawada, built in the 1850s, turned two flood deltas into the most intensively irrigated agricultural landscape in the country. Kakinada's port and the Krishna barrage below the goddess's hill are the two ends of one engineering programme, and modern coastal Andhra's density and politics both follow from it.
- Site withinVijayawada
The Kanaka Durga temple on Indrakiladri hill sits within Vijayawada city, on the north bank of the Krishna river in the city's central zone. The 10-century temple on the 60-metre hill overlooks the entire Vijayawada urban area and the Prakasam Barrage across the Krishna. The temple's position within Vijayawada makes it the city's chief religious landmark and the central Hindu pilgrimage node of coastal Andhra, with the annual Dussehra festival drawing over 10 million pilgrims across the city.
On these journeys
Sources
Hindu pilgrimage sites in India — Wikipedia
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