He is huge, only i did not see him

Lalita Iyer Musings

Avancha is a tiny village, off the Hyderabad-Bangalore highway and at Jadcharla. You need to take a left turn and then a few kilometres away is Avancha, Thimmajipeta Mandal of Nagarkurnool district. A few curious people turned to look at us, but most carried on with their chores.

While historically famous, few know this village is home to the massive Aishwarya Ganapathi—one of India's tallest monolithic Ganesha statues. Unbelievable, till I saw it with my eyes. Lord Ganesha sits outdoors in an open agricultural field of maize and cotton. This sculpture is covered with an asbestos sheet with a vent on top of his head and luckily, the current one has been a success because the previous two got blown away in the wind.

The Aishwarya Ganapathy stands 32-feet tall  and is 58-feet in width. Apparently, it was quite low and so it was raised to six feet on to a pedestal and he reaches quite deep still. So, while he is not going to be blown away, temporary structures around him cannot handle nature.

It is believed that "this monolithic statue was carved around 1113 AD during the reign of Western Chalukya empire by a regional feudatory king named Thylapudu, who used Avancha as his capital." And this was sculpted directly out of a single, giant boulder in white granite, available only in Telangana.

This dynasty ruled Telangana region for over 200 years by King Vikramaditya and his sons Someshwarudu and Thylapudu.

It is also said that the sculpture is unfinished because of the untimely death of the then ruler.  Now with temple tourism taking front seat, the village of Avancha has woken up and trying to get the Lord Ganesha noticed so that the needful can be done.

Though the history of this temple is not very well known, yet there have been legendary writers who have written about this Ganesha. The late Kapilavai Lingamurthy was a prominent writer in Telugu and he has written more than 100 books and while I could not get hold of the book, he might have written about this monolith, then unsheltered Lord Aiswarya Ganesha in his book "Palamoor zilla Devalayalu."

Another book which has mention of the temple is "Mushi'ka Vahana Gajanana. Evolution of Ganapati in Telangana" written by Dr Satyanarayana Dyavanapalli. Several people have sung private songs in praise of the Lord.

Former CM K Chandrashekar Rao, who represented the Mahbubnagar Lok Sabha Constituency, had offered puja to the idol and had also assured people that he would build a temple for the monolith structure. He got distracted by Lord Narasimha.

The people of the village have prepared a blueprint and want to build a large temple with the gopuram reaching 73 ft in height and surrounded by 32 Ganesha swaroopas. Meanwhile, I also got to meet author Vannapatla Subbiah, who knew about the Ganesha but allowed the village to talk. He has written a book of poetry Pasarantina Kodavali, on his mother.

While I went eight days after the Ganesh Chaturthi, there was no crowd, though school children and the locals gathered around to tell me the story in multiple voices. The children did kollatam and then recited the Hanuman Chalisa.

– Lalita Iyer 

  Senior Journalist