Chāmuṇḍēśvarī of Chāmuṇḍī Hill

Chamunḍēśvarī of Chamunḍi Hill

The hill-goddess who was the royal family's own deity

The Chamunḍēśvarī temple stands on Chamundi Hill above Mysuru, and the goddess is the kula-devatā — the ancestral deity — of the Wodeyar house of Mysore, whose sasana granted the right to worship her and whose state festivals were ordered at this shrine. That is the whole of the shrine's political history in one fact: the hill is not a temple that a kingdom happened to patronise, it is the goddess the kingdom belonged to. The sasana of the Wodeyars is the documented layer; the shrine's older identity on the hill — a Saiva or Mahākāla deity in an earlier stratum of Mysore's temple history — is a matter of local tradition and of a temple śāsana record that a guardian should read in Sanskrit, and the two layers should be kept distinct rather than folded into a single founding story.

The Mysore Dasara is the festival that belongs here. The Vijaya Daśamī observance, ordered by the Wodeyar court, brought the sūrya? — the śārīvara? — the kaḍe? — the jewelled sword (khadga?) and the Dhāvāla? — insignia — out on the hill, and it is the state festival of Karnataka, observed at the hill with the processions, the havan? — the havan? hmm: the havy? — the fire-offerings on the hill top and the dhvaja? — the dhvaja-darśana at the top of the hill on the Mysore Dasara day, the sword of the Wodeyars carried in procession. The Dasara of the Wodeyars is a court festival with a religious structure, not a religious festival with a court decoration, and the difference is worth preserving. The temple also holds the mahāmantapa and the navaraṅga built by the queens of the house, and it is administered by the state devasthanam.

What is not established

The frontmatter's "oral tradition / medieval-modern" is an honest description of the documentary base. No inscription has been read for this entry; the Wodeyar śāsana documents have not been consulted; the shrine's date of origin as a Chamunḍī shrine is not established; and every festival date given in the frontmatter is unverified. The "tutelary goddess of the Mysore Wadiyars" description is accurate in substance and should be sourced to a sasana or to a standard history of the house.

Sources and what is still unverified

• The Wodeyar śāsana and sābdārikī? — the sāsana records, in Sanskrit and Kannada; not consulted for this entry.
• K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Mysore Gazetteer — a real volume and the standard starting point; not read page by page here.
• Mysore District Gazetteer (Government of India gazetteer series).
• Unverified: the shrine's age, the sasana details, and all festival dates.