Karkala Gommateshwara

A free-standing Bahubali of about thirteen metres, raised on a rock outcrop above the town.

A Karnataka coastal town holding a monolithic Bahubali of about forty-one feet, consecrated in 1432 and, for over five centuries, the tallest such figure in the world before Shravanabelagola’s larger statue and, later, Gommatagiri and other twentieth-century colossi entered the reckoning.

Karkala’s Bahubali stands on a granite hillock with its own Mahamastakabhisheka tradition, held roughly once every twelve years in the same anointing form as Shravanabelagola’s, on a smaller scale. The town also holds a cluster of Digambara basadis from the same Bhairarasa Wodeyar patronage that raised the statue.

Written for Jain Times. Corrections are welcome — see sources and licences.