Gubbi Tourism, Karnataka India

Gubbi (P. 8,543) is an important trading centre, situated 13 miles west of the Tumkur town, on the Bangalore-Poona railway line and the Bangalore-Shimoga road. It is the headquarters of the Gubbi taluk and has a municipality. It is said to have been founded over 400 years ago by the Gauda of Hosahallli, two miles distant, and was formerly called ‘Amaragondapura’. He claimed to be a descendant of Honnappa Gauda, a hereditary chief of the Nonabas, who lived about 700 years ago and owned an area yielding revenue of 3,000 pagodas. The family was firsh made a tributary by the Mysore Rajas, to whom it paid 500 pagoda a year. Haidar increased the tribute to 2,500 leaving them little better than renters and Tipu dispossessed them altogether.

At gubbi is held one of the chief annual fairs in the district frequented by merchants from distant places. The neighbouthood produces coarse cotton cloths, blankets, arecanut of the kind called wolagra, cocoanut, jaggery, tamarind, capsicum, wheat, rice and ragi and lac. It is an intermediate mart for goods passing through the peninsula in almost every direction. The place is also noted for its cart-making cottage industry.

Gubbi is, according to tradition, Amaragonda Kshetra, a holy place. Gosala Channabasaveshvara, Amaragonda Mallikarjuna, Mallanarya and other Veerashaiva teachers lived at this place. it is stated that two gubbachchis or sparrows, which used to ‘listen’ to poet Mallanarya when he was expounding the Puranas in the Mallikarjuna temple, fell dead on the day that the exposition was concluded. Thenceforward, the place acquired the name of gubbi (Chatakapuri in Sanskrit). The temple has still the Samadhi of these birds.

The oldest temple in the town is the gadde Malleshvara, so called because it was once situated in a gadde or wet field outside the village. Owing to the subsequent extension of the village, the temple now stands within the town itself. It has three cells in the navaranga enshrining Dakshinamurti, Parvati and Veerabhadra. There are also two niches containing Ganapati and Subrahmanya. Leanin gagainst the south wall near the Dakshinamurti cell, are some curious figures, namely, a rude male figure armed with a bow and an arrow, said to represent a Shaiva devotee named Ohila, also called Vailappa, who used to offer everyday his own weight of guggala or bdellium to Shiva; a well-carved seated female figure. About one foot high, with some indistinct things in the two hands; and two male figures, about one foot high, standing side by side with what looks like a vessel between the hands placed one over the other, two sticks or spears standing between them. Gubbi was a place of great literaty activity in the 15th and 16th centuries. Several Kannada works bearing on the Veerashaiva religion and philosophy were written during this period. Mallanna, the author of the Ganabhashya Ratnamale and othe works, who flourished at the close of the 15th century, was a native of gubbi and a lineal descendant of Amaragonda Mallikarjuna. His grandson, Gubbi Mallanarya, wrote Bhavachintaratna and Veerashivamrutapurana in verse in 1513 and 1530 respectively. Prabhuga, a disciple of Mallanarya, wrote in about 1520 Chudanasthana and the Vaibhagrajasthana; and Cherma, another disciple of his, composed Cheramanka-Charite in 1526. Mallanarya’s son Shantesha wrote the Tontada Siddheshvara Purana in 1561.