Foundation inscriptions are, as a class, dull. A donor, a date, a king, a list of the lands set aside to keep a lamp burning. They are historically priceless and almost never literature. The slab near the porch at Amruthapura is an exception, and the reason is the name attached to it.
What the stone says
It records that on a day in 1196 CE, Amritesvara-dandanayaka — *dandanayaka* meaning commander, a general in the army of the Hoysala king Veera Ballala II — set up the god Amritesvara, with royal sanction. That is the transaction. The god is named for *amrita*, the nectar of immortality, and the general is named for the god, or the god for the general, depending which way you think the naming ran; the village of Amruthapura took its name from the temple afterwards.
The verses on the slab were composed by Jannayya — Janna — a court poet of Ballala II. Janna is not a minor figure. He held the title *Kavichakravarti*, emperor among poets, and his *Yashodhara Charite* of about 1209, a Jain narrative poem of considerable moral severity, is still read as one of the monuments of classical Kannada. He also wrote the *Anantanatha Purana*. To have his composition on a village temple wall, in situ, eight hundred and thirty years on, is not something many buildings can offer.
Ballala II, and why 1196
The date is not incidental. Veera Ballala II came to the Hoysala throne in July 1173 and turned a Chalukya vassalage into an empire. He beat the Yadava king Bhillama V at Soratur and Lakkundi in about 1191, pushed the northern boundary to the Malaprabha and the Krishna, and by 1192 had crowned himself emperor over most of what is now Karnataka. A record of his own dated 1196 — the same year as this temple — claims him victorious over the ruling families of Banavasi, Hangal, Halashi, Nolambavadi, Bagalkot and Yelburgi.
So the temple belongs to the top of the arc. His generals had money and standing, and they spent both on stone: the same reign produced the Kedareshwara temple at Halebidu, the Veera Narayana temple at Belavadi and the twin Chennakeshava and Nageshvara temples at Mosale. Amruthapura is of that group and is the one nobody goes to. After 1212 Ballala II lost everything north of the Tungabhadra to Singhana II, and the Hoysala state declined through the following century. The temple, in a village too small and too far off the road to be worth sacking, simply stayed.
Mallitamma starts work
The other name is above your head. The domed ceilings of the main hall carry the earliest known work of Ruvari Mallitamma, the most celebrated of all Hoysala sculptors, whose artistic career is reported at some seventy-three years and whose signed work appears on temples across the old kingdom, including the great late ensemble at Somanathapura. Several sculptors signed their work at Amruthapura; his is the name that matters, and this is where it first appears.
It is worth standing under those domes for a minute with that in mind. Almost every famous building is the work of someone at their peak. This one has, in the same courtyard, a mature poet at the height of his reputation and a young mason at the very beginning of a working life that would run most of a century.
What happened next to the village
Two later inscriptions show the endowment being built up around the temple. One of 1206 records officials making a grant free of all imposts for its maintenance. One of 1210 records the establishment at Amruthapura of a *Brahmapuri* of twenty-four Brahmin families, with land to support them, to run the temple and the settlement. The village as it exists is in that sense a creation of the temple rather than the other way round — which is worth remembering when you stand in a place that now looks like a temple that happens to be in a village.
The temple is today protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and worshipped in daily by the village. A lamp inside is reported to have been kept burning for about two hundred years, taking close to a litre of oil a day. Whatever the exact figure, the point stands: nothing here has been switched off since 1196.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Janna?
A Jain poet at the court of the Hoysala king Veera Ballala II, honoured with the title Kavichakravarti — emperor among poets. His best-known work is the Yashodhara Charite of about 1209. The verses on the 1196 foundation inscription at Amruthapura were composed by him.
Who was Ruvari Mallitamma?
The most celebrated sculptor and architect of the Hoysala period, with an artistic career reported at some seventy-three years and signed work on temples across the kingdom. He is known to have begun his career at Amruthapura, working on the domed ceilings of the main hall.
What do the later inscriptions at Amruthapura record?
An inscription of 1206 CE records officials making a grant free of all imposts for the temple’s maintenance. One of 1210 CE records the founding at Amruthapura of a Brahmapuri of twenty-four Brahmin families, endowed with land, to run the temple and the settlement around it.
Which other temples did Veera Ballala II’s reign produce?
The Kedareshwara temple at Halebidu, the Veera Narayana temple at Belavadi, the twin Chennakeshava and Nageshvara temples at Mosale, and this one at Amruthapura. His reign, 1173 to 1220, was the height of Hoysala power.