Reclaiming aura of Asokan era

KALABURAGI: A team headed by a professor from Calcutta University is documenting the Asokan Circuit in Karnataka from Sannati in Chittapur taluk of Kalaburagi district to Siddapur in Uttara Kannada.

The three-member team is led by Susmita Basu Majumdar, head of Ancient History department, Calcutta University. In a joint initiative, the Hyderabad Karnataka Region Development Board (HKRDB) and Calcutta University have undertaken the task of documenting the Asokan Circuit in Karnataka from Sannati to Siddapura and also the important historic evidence in Buddhist sites. Also, a pictorial Pali-English-Kannada dictionary is to be created. Karnataka has, perhaps, the largest number of Asokan sites and those dating back to the 3rd Century BC are the earliest legible records found in Afghanistan in the north-west to Karnataka and AP in the south, Odisha in the east to Girnar in the west. The project will first document all Asokan sites in the state and then establish the full circuit from Afghanistan.

The other members of the team are artist Rajib Chakraborty and film-maker Ranjay Ray Choudhury. Meanwhile the team that was on a visit to Sannati to document an Asokan edict in the Chandrala Parameshwari Temple at Sannati, has restored the statue of Mahakali which was damaged after a portion of the temple collapsed in 1986.

The team during its visit had noticed that the original idol of Goddess Mahakali, broken in four pieces, lying outside the temple premises on the banks of the Bhima.

According to Prof. Majumdar the original 12th Century idol of Goddess Mahakali was a “seated, four-handed figure”, wearing a Mundamala (a garland of skulls), holding a Damaru, a Trishul, a Kapala and a Sword but the idol recovered from the banks of the Bhima had only two hands holding a Trishul and a Kapala. The other two hands were broken.