Place · 1000-pillar Jain basadi · India
Moodabidri 1000-pillar basadi
Also known as Chaturmukha basadi, Chaturmukha basadi (Tribhuvana Tilaka), Moodabidri, Moodabidri 1000, pillar basadi
The 15-century Chaturmukha (four-faced) 1000-pillar Jain basadi at Moodabidri in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka, 35 kilometres from Mangaluru — the pre-eminent Jain shrine of Tulunadu (the Tulu-speaking coastal Karnataka region). The temple was built by the Chowtavara king Devaraya in 1430 CE and expanded through the 15-16th centuries. The 1,000 pillars (actually around 300, but the folk count stuck) are each individually carved with distinct relief panels in granite — architecturally one of the finest Jain stone complexes in coastal Karnataka. The temple is a Digambara Jain pilgrimage. The 18 Digambara basadis of Moodabidri together constitute the largest surviving Jain monastic complex in the Tulu country. The temple's annual Pancha Kalyana festival each March-April draws over 50,000 pilgrims. ASI protection since 1917.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 13.070, 74.992
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyMūḍabidri
Mūdabidri's thousand-pillar Chaturmukha basadi is the pre-eminent shrine of the Tulu Jain country and holds the palm-leaf Dhavalā manuscripts, among the most important Digambara texts surviving anywhere. The Kārkala colossus stands twenty kilometres away, raised under the same Bhairarasa rulers. The Dhavalā manuscripts were kept unread for centuries and only edited and published in the twentieth, which is how a canonical Digambara text came to be effectively rediscovered.
- Companion in the same setManjunatha shrine (Jain-managed)
The Tulu coast is where Jain kings ruled Hindu subjects for centuries, and the arrangements that came out of it outlived the kingdoms — a Jain family still administering the Śiva temple at Belur, with Hindu priests and one endowment. Mūdabidri is the Jain centre those same families endowed. Jain political power lasted longer on the Tulu coast than anywhere else in India, into the seventeenth century, which is why its institutional arrangements are unlike the rest of the country's.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Saavira Kambada Basadi”. Jain tīrtha guides and the Digambara and Śvetāmbara temple trusts’ own records.
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