BALAKRISHNA OF UDIPI

SRAVANABELAGOLA

Think of that tiny temple town of Sravanabelagola, there sails then into the orbit of your mental vision, the gigantic monolithic statue of a Jain saint, a like of which has not been erected by any race, at any time, in any place on this terrestrial globe since mankind started chisselling icons out of stones for adoration. And giving artistic representation of the deities, he adores. This rarity of rarities measuring 17.5 m in height, standing on 120 m high hillock was installed as back as some eighteen centuries back, to be precise in 183 AD. This unique towering granite statue of Gomateswara - a monumental sculptural piece carved out of a single rock is a standing testimony of the ace engineering feet of infinite dimensions of the oriental art. Piercing into the eternal blue canopy of the heavens, this gigantic statue dominates the landscape and is visible for many miles around. Celebrated in prose and verse, this spiritual light house as it is fittingly termed is beckoning the thesists and tourists alike to direct their steps towards it to marvel at its size, shape and sculpture. It astonished even the eminent connoisseurs of art, like Fergusson, who expressed his inability of estimating its origin - made atop the hill out of a single boulder or brought from elsewhere.

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