So the idea has now set in motion work to manifest a temple in Hoysala style architecture, which is almost forgotten, has no texts to back it, or substantial erudition in the country to revive it. It is to say the least, a monumental tribute to the grand style of architecture that for over seven centuries lay dormant.

It all began 10 years ago with one man’s vision to build a small temple as an offering to his village that had none. Aravind Reddy’s father, Ramalinga Reddy, who is president of the Shree Kalyana Venkateshwara Hoysala Art Foundation and a retired educationist, wished to give back to his village, and so he along with his brother-in-law Keshav Reddy, decided to contribute their own money and build a temple.

The inclination to build a temple was natural to the two as they hail from families that have gifted the city of Bengaluru many temples in the past. While Aravind Reddy’s maternal great-grandfather had travelled to Rajasthan 90 years ago to get work done for a temple he built in Domlur in Bengaluru, his maternal grandfather was involved in the construction of the Muneshwara and Lakshmi Narayana temple inside the Vidhan Soudha premises, while the Suryanarayana temple built by their family in Bengaluru is set to complete three decades.

The thought then was to pool in funds to the tune of Rs 10 lakh and build a small temple on one of their lands in the village. “It was just a thought, on a very small scale. I had five acres of land in my share, and we were not using it. So we thought we would keep one acre and build a temple for the village on the rest of the land,” says Aravind Reddy as he takes us on the journey of this magnum opus in the making. A trained artist, himself, specialised in Mysore paintings, Reddy was determined that the temple, no matter how small, must be aesthetically appealing and a reflection of Hoysala architectural heritage.

Thanks to his close association with people from the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, and his frequent visits to the artisan’s training school at Jogaraoddi that had brought him in touch with expert sculptors like Ashok Gudigar, Ganesh L Bhatt and the likes, there were no two thoughts about reviving the Hoysala style of architecture through the temple. “When my father brought up the idea of building a temple, I thought even if we build it on a small scale, why not do it in the way of our own heritage the Hoysala style,” says Aravind Reddy.

It was this desire that triggered the urge to revive the architectural heritage. “The heritage architecture is long forgotten. It has been almost 800 years - eight centuries since the royal patronage, as it ended with the Hoysala Kingdom,” he explains. “There are artists who do that kind of work, but it ends up being an artwork on someone’s wall or a showpiece somewhere. But why not let such artistic excellence manifest into a temple, I thought”. It was this little idea born 10 years ago that led him to begin the groundwork for it - from the sculptors to the stone, everything had to be sorted.

Sculptors

Apart from the experts on board and their teams, as far as young sculptors are concerned, Reddy’s main concern was originality. And being an artist himself, this was one sphere where he clearly knew what he wanted and so started looking for people who had been doing work around the Hoysalas. Though there are many who have created replicas of Hoysala work, Reddy’s discontent was because, in his own words, “No one thought of how to create something new in the Hoysala style of architecture. Most people go to Belur or Halebeedu, click pictures and then reproduce it. But with reproduction, even the best can only try and recreate the original excellence,” he muses.

Also, given that it would require the sculptors to go almost 800 years back in time, which is no mean task, Reddy began his hunt for sculptors. “In cities, it is more about how much a piece of work can fetch, but fortunately we found sculptors in places like Puri Jagannath who are still pursuing the traditional way of doing things. Commercialisation hasn’t touched them yet, and that gave us hope that we can indeed revive the heritage and regain the class,” explains Reddy, who is positive about roping in such artists to train in the Hoysala tradition and groom them to work on the temple. At present a team of sculptors from Karkala headed by Gunawantheshwara Bhat, a student of Ganesh L Bhat, is working on the initial pieces.