Badami, along with Aihole, Pattadakal and some other sites in and around the valley of the River Malaprabha in Bagalkot District of Karnataka, contain some of the earliest temples built in stone of southern India, beginning with the constructions of the Early Chalukyan dynasty, which ruled from Badami (ancient Vatapi) during the 6th to 8th centuries CE. However, the history of construction of monuments in stone go back much farther in time, as evidenced by the large number of megalithic monuments that are distributed at several sites in the Malaprabha Valley. In continuation of our earlier work which argues that the Chalukyas and their successors were continuing the tradition of commemoration exemplified by the megaliths into later monumental architecture – ranging from temples to miniature shrines to other forms of commemoration, this paper examines the immediate landscape around the Bhutnath Temple at Badami and interpret it as a memorial landscape with various forms of commemorative structures.
Figure 5: The large boulder called Panchalinganaphadi, with two small temples on top of it. To the bottom right of the boulder is the shrine enclosing Sheshashayi Vishnu, while the small excavation at the base of the boulder in the triangular strip of lawn is the “Sunlight Cave”.
The work discussed in this paper grew out of research undertaken on “Ancient Landscapes of South India” as a Homi Bhabha Fellow (2012‐2014) and the author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council for support. The author is also indebted to Prof. A. Sundara, Prof. Shrinivas Padigar, Prof. S. Settar and Prof. Ravi Korisettar for enlightening discussions which led to several insights and to Dr. Corinna Wessels‐Mevissen for several crucial inputs including drawing attention to the relief carving inside the shrine near Panchalinganaphadi.