Vatapi Ganapati

 

"Vatapi Ganapati" is a much loved composition in Carnatic Music, one of the two branches of classical music in India. Composed by the great poet-composer Mutthuswami Dixitar (1775-1885), it is a hymn praising a specific idol of Ganapati,  worshipped in a small shrine in Tiruchenkattankudi Utrapatishwaraswamy Temple, in Thiruvarur district in the Tamil Nadu state of India.

The name of this place may seem long and complicated to those who are unfamiliar with South Indian languages, but so is the distance covered by this Ganapati. Vatapi (present day Badami), is a place located about 1000 km away from this coastal town. According to the g-maps, it would take a brisk walker about 190 hours or a week to cover this distance. 

How did a temple idol get its name from a place so far away? 

Anirudh Kanisetti's answers this question (and many others) through his fascinating new book titled, "Lords of the Deccan". For the vast majority of us who had been brought up on passing references in our history books to this part of this country, Kanisetti's book is a revelation, an eye-opener to the array of kingdoms that had ruled this vast area in central India from 500 to 1200 CE. 

Is is the story of the powerful dynasties that ruled this part of the country before the Islamic invasions - the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rashtrskutas, and the Cholas. It is also a rather sad commentary on the shortage of written records that tells us about the life and times of those who built some of the massive temples of South India. Among these is the Kailashnatha temple at Ellora that was 'built' top-down by cutting through solid rock on a cliffside, after carefully chipping away more than 200,000 tonnes of granite stone!

Coming back to the story of Vatapi Ganapathi, it turns out that this idol was actually war booty that was brought here more than 1300 years earlier by the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram.  Tiruchenkattankudi was the birthplace of Paranjothi, the commander-in-chief of the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I (reign: 630–668 CE). 

Contrary to the Hindutva tropes about Hindu temples getting destroyed by exclusively by Muslim invaders, it is interesting to know that ever since temple building became a popular symbol of power projection after 500 CE, it was fairly common for Hindu kings to loot and destroy the temples of their rivals. 

Some other nuggets are even more surprising, such as the extent to which foreigners, especially West Asians, were welcomed by the kingdoms of ancient India. Muslim Persians and Arabs, as well as Zoroashtrians, Jews and Christians of diverse ethnicities, had not only settled in large numbers in the port cities but also rose to high positions in the civil and military hierarchies:

One fascinating example is a Persian Muslim known to us a Madhumati, son of Sahiyarahara (a Sanskritised version of Muhammad, son of Shahryar). In the tenth century, Madhumati was appointed the Rashtrakuta governor of the entire region of Sanjan, including much of northern Konkan.

Long before "Globalisation" became a buzzword, the Rashtrakutas, Pallavas and Cholas were already convinced of the strategic, political and economic benefits of encouraging meritocracies that were multi-ethnic, multilingual and cosmopolitan!