A Digital Analysis of an Early Medieval Cultic and Ritual Change in Hampi: The Mula Virupaksha Temple in the Hemakuta Hill Sacred Space

Abstract

This paper examines a 12th-century Virupaksha temple through the reconstruction and exploration of space, movement, devotee corporeal experiences, and the use of natural landscape microtopographic features in monument design. The Mula Virupaksha Temple presents a dramatic change in the previously non-imperial sacred landscape in the Hemakuta Hill area at Hampi (Bellary District, Karnataka). With its construction, Hampi transitioned from a local Shaiva pilgrimage center dedicated to the river goddess Pampa and her counterpart Bhairava to a popular Shaiva pilgrimage and cult center of the newly imported god, Virupaksha. The Mula Virupaksha Temple presents a design thoroughly novel to the area that ushered in a period of sophisticated and unprecedented architectural planning at the site which incorporated natural landscape features for the management and cultivation of devotee ritual corporeal experiences. Virupaksha, his patrons, and associated artisans brought significant cultic change and architectural innovation that took root and persisted into the imperial Vijayanagara period, from the mid-14th to late 16th centuries. The present paper relies on a digital methodology developed to identify ritual changes in early medieval South Asian sacred spaces, focusing on time-sensitive maps created through a geographic information system (GIS), and coupled with the immersive panoramic capabilities of Google Street View (GSV) for a ground-based investigation of the non-ephemeral pilgrimage landscape features.