Talakad

We drove to Talakad from Muthathi. The town is famous for ancient temples from the 16^th century and before. We visited the famous Vaidhyeshwar Shiva temple. The temple looks really really amazing from the stone age times. There were bunch of guides eager to explain us the temple history but we were too late to return so we just walked through the temples and took some pictures for my blog. After I got home, I was curious about the temple because the guides were explaining something very interestingly. So, I googled Talakad! To start with I learnt that the town gets its name from two brothers Tala and Kadu, who were the ones that found the Lord Shiva Lingam with great effort due to which Lord Shiva had granted them immortality. The entrance of the temple holds the statues of the two brothers on each side.

Main Entrance on the right of this picture

As I searched more, I learnt there is a legendary history about this town, a curse that people even today believe and follow to ease the effects of it. The curse was spelled on the Royal family of Mysore – The Wodeyars. The story goes as – In the 16th Century Raja Wodeyar ruled Mysore and the Vijayanagar viceroy named Tirumala held court at Srirangapatna. Raja Wodeyar attacked Tirumala after knowing about the planned plot to kill him. Raja Wodeyar took over Srirangapatna and Tirumala fled to a village of Malangi with his wife, Rani Alamelamma.

Side entrance

The Rani/queen had taken all the royal jewelry along with her which Raja Wodeyar wanted to get back. So he sent his soldiers to seek the queen. The queen was taken by surprise when the soldier found her at the banks of Talkad. As the soldiers pursued her, she made a quick escape and jumped off a cliff into the River Cauvery. But before jumping she let out the curse –

Talakadu Maralaagali
Malangi Maduvaagali
Mysuru Dhoregalige Makkalagade hogali!

The literal translation would be –

I curse Talakad to be submerged under creeping sands
May a cruel whirlpool be a scourge of Malangi
And the kings of Mysore suffer the pangs of Childlessness!

And to ward off the ill-effects of the curse, devotees from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala perform the Panchalinga darshan once every four to 14 years, to appease the five forms of Lord Shiva. Again the date for this darshan is a complex calculation. The first day should fall on a new moon day in the Hindu Kartika month. It should be a Monday and the sun sign should be Scorpio. Such a combination occurs every 4 to 14 years. The last darshan was in 2006 and the previous one in 1993.



Temples

 As dramatic as it sounds I went ahead asking my grandmother. First, to my surprise she knew the story, the people, their names, everything! I asked her if really the curse was true that the royal family has been childless and she said yes, for the past 20 generations they have had no children and hence they adopt heirs to the royal family. Today I wanted to study more about this curse. Of course there has to be a scientific explanation for the 3 layers of the curse – the sand burial of the temples, the whirlpool near the village of Malangi and the heir-less royal family of Mysore.

Lingams out in the open

I found a wonderful blog link and it was just as interesting as the legend itself. Read along J

http://akshay-chavan.blogspot.com/2009/08/curse-of-mysore-royal-family-rational.html

Dravidian Architecture

Of course the superstitions we follow have some scientific background but the stories woven around them are so interesting they make me find more information about them. As I read the above blog, I had a mental picture running in my mind like a movie about the queen and the curse J. 

Temple carvings

 Of course there are other versions of the story too - http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/the-legend-of-talkad

Carvings of Tala and Kadu at the entrance of the temple

Now I am eager to go back to the town of Talakad and look for other ancient temples for the sake of art and history.