Hero Stone / Veeragallu / NadukaRkal / நடுகற்கள், at Kaliyur erected to celebrate the Victory of Chozhas over Gangas. at Haradanahalli, Karnataka, a Talakad Heritage Walk.

This is the continuation post on Hero Stones during the Talakad heritage visit. When we inquired about the hero stone erected for the Chozha Victory over the Gangars, the villagers directed us to many places and one of the Villagers came to our rescue and showed us a group of hero stones erected behind the temple. Since the hero stones showed was not the one, that we wanted to see. Again we talked to the Villagers who finally showed us this 11th-century (1006 CE) Chozha hero stone kept on the back side of a temple (Thanks to the Sasi team for identifying the same).

In the hero stone 2/3^rd  of the stone slab has the Kannada inscriptions and 1/3^rd has the war scene between Rajaraja Chozha headed by his Caption Kottamangala Thella Kulathilaka Aprameyan and the Gangars. The Inscription starts with Rajaraja-I's, title and also mentions the names of 18 Gangar's captains killed in the battle. The battle scene is finely carved on this slab, for which no description is required. 

The capture of the messenger by the Gangars was the main reason behind this battle. Rajaraja traveled from Chozha Nadu with Elephant and horse forces to teach a lesson to Gangas. The Gangas in fear of losing the Capital Talakad, crossed the Cauvery River and faced the war at Kaliyur on the south banks of the river. 18 captains of Gangars, Hoysalas, and Nulambas were killed in the fierce battle held on 22-03-1006 with a heavy loss of soldiers, horses, and elephants. Finally, Chozhas won the battle and captured Talakad and renamed as Rajarapuram.

The place where the battle took place was once called Kavalur ( since it guarded Talakadu), but during the Chozha period, it became Kalaiyur, which is now Kaliyur. Historians like Sri Appadurai and Sri Sadasiva Pandarathar are mentioned as Kaliyur.

  

TALAKAD

In addition to Sri Parshvanath Tirthankara (which will be written in a separate post), we have seen two more hero stones. Both are 3 tiers and more than 75% of the first tier was found below the ground level. The sword of the hero is very similar to the one shown in Haradanahalli's hero stone.

LIYURU - MUDI GUNDAM

It was around 17 hrs when we completed the Kaliyuru visit and started our return journey to Erode, skipping the program of visiting a Chozha period temple at Mudigundam before Kollegal. Happened to see hero stones by the side of the road. Out of two reliefs, one was a Mahishamardini relief and the other one was a hero stone. This 3 tier hero stone is for a bullock cart hero who lost his life. In the first tier, the hero was driving a bullock cart and in the second tier, the Hero was taken to heaven by the angels. In the top row, the hero was shown worshipping Lord Shiva. Had our lunch at 17.30 hrs at Kollegal and continued our return journey to Erode.

 mahishamardini relief 

bullock cart hero Stone.

---OM SHIVAYA NAMA---