Panchalingeshwara

History

Barkur is the most under-visited important place in the district. The Alupa dynasty made it their capital, and historians point out that the town held something like 365 temples at its height. What survives is a scatter of shrines across an ordinary coastal town, and Panchalingeshwara is the largest of them.

Unlike most dates on this coast, this one rests on something. Inscriptions at the temple dated between 1129 and 1140 establish that the building existed by then, and a separate stone inscription refers to a twelfth-century Alupa king. One listing gives an eighth-century origin, which the inscriptions neither confirm nor exclude. The epigraphic record here is still producing: a Siditale hero stone was recovered at the temple during a recent survey.

Architecturally Barkur complicates the usual description of Tulu Nadu temples as timber-and-tile. Panchalingeshwara has sloping stone pillars over its sanctum, and the nearby Bairagi Ganapathy temple is cut entirely from stone with a slanted stone roof. The regional style is less uniform than a single photograph suggests.

Madhvacharya is connected to the town as well: he is said to have established the Bhandarakeri Mutt here around the same period as the Udupi temple.