Dewan Purnaiah
Yelandur is a taluk of Chamarajanagara district. It is very close to Chamarajanagar city. It is a small town connecting various places in the Chamarajanagar region. This town has a historic and cultural importance in this region.
Yelandur came into prominence under the Cholas. The Cholas were the emperors of the Tamil kingdom. The first known prince of the dynasty to have ruled this region is Singadepa or Devabhupala. He is said to have built the famous Gaurishwara temple of Yelandur at about 1550 A.D. This is a magnificient temple. This temple speaks volumes of the Cholas as great builders. It has a very beautiful main entrance. It went into a decreipt state but was later erected in 1654-55 by his great grandson Muddabhupa.
The Gaurishwara temple�s attractive entrances have no gopura (towers built on the entrance arches). However, the entrances have artistically created fine sculpture embedded into the walls and on pillars. Stone carved themes like Andhakasuravadha (killing of the demon Andhakasura), Shoolabrahma, Bhikshatanamurthy, Bhairava, Kalingamardana, and Dakshinamurthy tell these mythological stories. Narasimha in various manifestations like Dakshinamurthy, Sharabha, Vali and Sugriva can also be observed on these walls and pillars. The four corners and the door side of the mantapa have monolithic stone chains formed by circular stone carved links - each 20 centimetres in diameter. This mahadwara (great door) is therefore locally called as bale (bangle) mantapa, as these links resemble bangles.
Yelandur was later ruled by the Mysore wodeyars. In 1807, Yelandur and others surrounding villages were granted as jahgir (gifted land) to Dewan Purnaiah by Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. Dewan Purnaiah was one of the most revered statesmen in those times in the whole of India (India was an agglomeration of more than 100 princely states in those times and not one nation as it is now). He is credited with making the Wodeyar empire a very strong one. Even now, people benefit from his visionary works. He was born in Yelandur.
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In search of valuable treasure
The discovery of the priceless wealth at Dewan Purnaiah�s bungalow was initiated by the instincts of a Tahsildar.
S TAHSIN AHMED
The year was 1987! I was working as the Tahsildar of Yelandur, which is a small taluk in Mysore district. While going to the taluk office, I would often watch an old two-storeyed building, with locked doors. It had two porticos in front that were supported by ornate pillars. An old somber-looking tree in front of its unpainted and weather-beaten facade gave it an eerie look. This was Dewan Purnaiah�s building.
Purnaiah was the Dewan during the reign of Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and even the Wodeyars. He had a jahgir of agricultural lands in Yelandur. In fact, Purnaiah�s bungalow even housed the taluk office and the police station in the past. After these offices were shifted to new buildings, the bungalow was kept locked for nearly 15 long years.
There was a strange belief among the locals that a big black snake with hair on its body guarded Purnaiah�s treasure. Hence even during those 15 years, nobody dared to acquire the heirlooms in the building that belonged to Dewan Purnaiah. In fact, bowls of milk used to be kept in the vicinity of the building with the belief that the snake would drink it in the night.
While attending to routine office work on a bright sunny day on November 4, 1987, I asked the sheristedar for a very old file. He informed that the file was not available and that it could have probably been left back in the old Taluk office, which was housed in Purnaiah�s bungalow. This casual remark made me wonder as to what other things might be left inside the building. The very moment, I decided to discover the treasure hidden inside the building. People warned me of the foreboding evil, which they said may lead to tragic consequences. Undeterred, I moved ahead with a small group of my staff members, who volunteered to join me in this adventure. We walked over to the building and broke open the old, rusted door lock since nobody had its key. The door was pushed open and it made a squeaking noise. Everybody peered inside with wide-open eyes, but it was pitch dark and nothing was visible.
A ray of sunlight that pierced inside from the opposite end revealed the existence of a window. I asked my volunteers to go inside the building and open the window. They looked at each other, but nobody moved. Then I myself walked inside wading through age-old cobwebs.
It was dark inside and the thought of the black snake with hair on its body did send a shiver down my spine. But this was the deciding moment, I said to myself. If I falter, the discovery operation will be aborted. So I mustered courage, walked over to the window, unfastened the old wooden knobs and pushed the shutters open. Bright sunlight immediately lit the place and my staff finally entered the hall without much hesitation.
But the sight was quite disappointing. There were some old, medium-sized, black-coloured metal trunks, which we tried opening in vain. When we finally tried lifting them, its rusted bottom gave way, and gold ornaments started falling one after the other. There were gold necklaces, bangles, silver crowns and other jewellery in more than one trunk. We also discovered a collection of nearly 3000 antique coins in another trunk besides a few gold and silver coins. However, the black snake still remained elusive. By then, it was time for sun set and darkness started pervading the building, making us rely on the petromax lanterns.
While we were thus engrossed inside, the news that the Tahsildar had opened the bungalow spread like wild fire in Yelandur and the villagers flocked to the building. The crowd peered over our shoulders, pushing the staff so that they could get a glimpse of the treasure. Fearing the safety of the find, I had to call the Sub-Inspector of Police. We finally closed the bungalow, locked it and affixed the seal of the Tahsildar, and constables guarded the building throughout the night.
The next morning we continued exploring the bounty inside Purnaiah�s bungalow. In one of the rooms, we found plenty of black cloth manuscripts with neat white writing in Kannada. Each manuscript was about 15 feet in length but was repeatedly folded. These records are believed to contain information about the life and finances of the princely state of Mysore. So we delivered two jeep loads of these manuscripts to the State Arch-ives Department at Mysore, enriching them with enough research material to last for years. But there was not a word of gratitude from their end.
The All India Radio in its national news bulletin reported this event. The news also made it to the next day�s national and local newspapers also.
The news probably interested Dewan Purnaiah�s sixth grandson Raghavendra Rao Purnaiah and his wife Sukanya, who came down to Yelandur from Bangalore. Pleased with the latest developments, they handed over a rare photograph of Dewan Purnaiah’s grandson P N Krishna Murthy, who served as the Dewan of Mysore between 1901 and 1906. The Secretariat manual was prepared during his tenure, which is used even to this day as the bible for the Secretariat staff. I promptly handed over Dewan Krishnamurthy�s photograph to the Archives Department, which they utilised for a book published by them later, without even acknowledging the source of the photograph.
The gold and silver jewellery recovered from Dewan Purnaiah�s bungalow was weighed in the presence of the public and handed over to the State treasury of Yelandur, along with the other items. A few social workers wrote to the Chief Minister requesting that I be honoured with the Rajyothsava Award for the initiative.
Unfortunately, it was not an award that I received but a show-cause notice from the jurisdictional Assistant Commissioner asking me to issue an explanation as to why the bungalow was not opened for the last 15 years, while I had reported as the Tahsildar of Yelandur taluk just two months ago.
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| In Karnataka, Dasara is observed as State festival - Nadahabba, because of the celebration of the festival is steered by the Royal Family of Mysore. The royal family of Mysore performs special pooja on the occasion of Dasara. During Dasara, the entire City is gaily decorated and illuminated. The Palace and other important buildings are illuminated. Cultural programmes by famous artists are arranged in the Palace along with Sports, Wrestling, Poet’s meet, Food Festival, Film Festival witnessed by a large number of people. Dasara Exhibition is arranged in the Doddakere Maidana, by the Karnataka Exhibition Authority, where the public and private sector industries, leading business establishments, State Government departments put up their stalls to promote industrial and corporate business for months. |
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| Mysore is the former Capital of the erstwhile Wodeyars and the state of Mysore. Mysore is also known as the City of Palaces. Abode of untold grandeur and glory, where the rich heritage of the Wodeyars is carefully preserved to this day in its magnificent palaces, gardens, broad shady avenues and sacred temples. There is an old world charm about the city that reaches out and leaves no one untouched. Mysore, or Mahishur as it was called in the past, traces its history back to the mythical past, when Goddess Chamundeshwari of Chamundi Hills killed the wicked buffalo-headed demon, Mahishasura. |
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| Tippu was a great scholar and lover of literature. His artistic pursuits were also many and he made rich gifts to the Hindu temples. Tippu Sultan “Tiger of Karnataka” was killed in 1799 A.D., and the Mysore throne was handed back to the Wodeyar’s. The whole of Karnataka came under the control of the British in the beginning of the 19th century. The new state was named as new Mysore and the Maharaja of Mysore was appointed Governor by Independent India. This unified state was renamed as Karnataka on November 1, 1973. Mysore - the former capital of the erstwhile Wodeyars and also of the State of Mysore lost its prominence to Bangalore. |
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| The recorded history of Mysore City, which was a principal town of a district, goes back to 10th century AD. After witnessing many vicissitudes and remaining for centuries the headquarters of a small principality, Mysore, for well nigh two centuries lost out to Srirangapatna as a city of any consequence. It was Raja Wodeyar who, in 1610, set up headquarters at Srirangapatna after asserting his independence from the Vijayanagar viceroy. The centre of gravity shifted back to Mysore with the court starting to function once again and the population remigrating to it from Srirangapatna. It was administered under the British Commission from 1831 to 1881 after a spell of governance under the great Dewan Purnaiah, who survived the Hyder-Tippu era. |
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| The city really started growing into its present form after the Rendition of 1881 when the throne was restored to Chamarajendra Wodeyar, the scion of the royal family, who ruled the State for 13 years till his death in 1894. Chamarajendra Wodeyar and later the Maharani Regent commissioned a number of important buildings, besides putting some order in the City’s by now visible growth. But the credit for its blossoming into the city that we are familiar with goes to the long spell of rule of Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the Saint King and prince among builders, the Silver Jubilee of whose reign was celebrated in 1927. The foundation of the City’s spacious and excellently planned layouts had already been laid during the administration of Dewans Seshadri Iyer and M. Visveswaraya. With the Silver Jubilee Spirit of the celebrations of Krishnaraja Wodeyar’s rule, the city invested with much of its remarkable aesthetics - new parks and boulevards and some noteworthy additions to its architectural scene. Sir Mirza Ismail (Dewan from 1926 to 1941), a great aesthete himself, did much to enhance the City’s aesthetics. Mysore inspite of being ruled by different Rulers and Kingdoms for ages, still retains its old charm and stately beauty. There are many ‘not-to-be-missed’ sights in Mysore like the magnificent Mysore Palace, Sri Jayachamarajendra Art Gallery, St. Philomena’s Church, KRS Brindavan Gardens. |
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