Silicon Valley East: Bangalore: Bull Temple

I'm not a religious person but I absolutely love religious art. I love the sincerity of it. Usually, there's a clear and inspirational message - love your neighbor, love God (or maybe nature if you're not a believer), etc. It often makes me feel more connected to the world around me, and to myself. So first on my list of sight seeing in Bangalore was a temple.

Bull Temple is a shrine for Nandi, Lord Shiva's mount. Nandi (which means "joyful" in Sanskrit) frequently serves as a guard to Shiva, and indeed, there is a much smaller shrine for Shiva behind Nandi in this temple.

The temple houses a 15' by 20' sculpture of a bull, carved from 1 block of granite. But "sculpture" really isn't the right word for it, because it was never meant to be art. In a Hindu context, this would be called a murti, which literally means "embodiment" and is a representation of divinity. The murti was carved in 1537 under the rule of Kempe Gowda, who also founded the city of Bangalore. The entrances leading up to the murti are all quite new, maybe even as recent as the 1990's.

There are 2 competing legends surrounding this Nandi murti. The first legend has it that an area bull was constantly grazing on local farmers' groundnut fields, much to their consternation. They got together and built this temple and from then on, the bull left their crops alone. The 2nd legend is a bit more fantastic. It starts much in the same way as the first, with an area bull destroying a groundnut field. This particular field's farmer was so enraged that he struck the bull on the head with the club. The bull was so shocked and injured that he turned to stone on the spot! The local farmers all felt terrible about the fate of this poor bull so they built it a temple. But then, the stone began to grow and the worried farmers prayed to Lord Shiva to help them. He told them to retrieve a trident buried near the stone and place it on the bull's forehead. When this was done, the stone stopped growing and the farmers could all get on with the groundnut business.

Since then, and even today, the first groundnut harvest of the year is offered to this Nandi murti.

Before dropping me off at the temple, my driver admonished me not to give any money to anyone. He said if I did he would have to start going with me everywhere, and he really seemed unhappy about the idea of having to be both my driver and my babysitter, so I promised him I would not let anyone separate me from my money. Of course, the minute I stepped into the temple a young man started to give me a "tour". It lasted about 3 minutes and I couldn't understand much of what he said, except at the end when he took me off to the side, out of view of the priests, and asked me for $20. That's about 1000 rupees, which is what you'd pay for dinner at an up-scale restaurant here (alcohol, tax, and tip included). I gave him 100 rupees and hoped my driver wouldn't find out.

The entrance: