Ranganathaswamy Temple, Kasibugga

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• The temple is at Kasibugga in Warangal. The Census volume of 1964 calls it the Kasi Bugga Ranganathaswamy temple. The District Census Handbook of 1986 says that it is popularly known as Kasibugga Ranganathaswamy.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal · District Census Handbook 1986
• The District Census Handbook of 1986 says that the temple was originally a Siva temple. Both Census volumes note that the image of Ranganathaswamy rests on a pedestal of the kind made for a Sivalinga. For this reason, the 1964 volume says, the linga is believed to have been replaced by the image after the decline of the Kakatiyas.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal · District Census Handbook 1986
• The 1964 volume adds that a small Siva temple stands beside the Ranganathaswamy temple, and that the Sivalinga is enshrined in it.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal
• To the north of the small Siva temple is a well called Kasi Bugga, which means the spring of Kasi. Local belief holds that the Ganga flows to it underground from Kasi, or Benares.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal
• According to a tradition recorded in the 1964 volume, the wife of a Mandaleswara, the head of a small region, wished to bathe daily in the water of the Ganges. This was after the fall of the Kakatiyas. Her husband had a well dug and installed the goddess Ganga in it.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal
• The District Census Handbook of 1986 gives a different version. It places a small spring to the north of the temple itself and explains the name Kasibugga by it. It says that the present image was installed after the downfall of the Kakatiyas, and that a local chief built the temple as his wife desired.District Census Handbook 1986
• S. Gopalakrishna Murthy records a tradition that Rudra built the temple at Kasibugga, together with the Mailaradeva temple at Ainavolu and the Ekavira temple at Mogilicherla. He accepts this tradition because it fits as a preparation for the Thousand Pillared Temple, which Rudra raised in 1162.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy records another tradition about the temple. The king is said to have gone to it secretly and alone to worship, and the queens learnt his secret through Jain astrologers. Murthy remarks that the king could not have gone to Kasi, or Varanasi, as the story would have us believe.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy says that the Kasibugga temple follows the pattern of the Hidimbasrama temple. That temple stands on Madikonda hill. Murthy describes it as a Jain temple facing north that was converted into a temple of Veerabhadra.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy also names the temples at Kasibugga among those with a tower in the form of a stepped, elongated pyramid, like the Sambhunigudi. He traces this form to the stepped stone towers of Jain temples of the Kadamba region, which were reproduced in brick at the Kakatiya capital. He calls the form not a happy one.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy writes that the Sahasralinga Ganapati temple in Warangal fort was probably built in the time of Ganapati Deva. He adds that it is now wrongly called Venkatesvaralaya. The Sahasralinga of that temple is said to be the one kept in the mandapa of the Kasibugga temple when Murthy wrote in 1964.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• A Sahasralinga is a linga with many small lingas carved over its surface. According to Murthy, one Mantu Annayya first installed this Sahasralinga in Warangal and named it Sahasralinga Ganapatisvara.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy finds a Sahasralingesvara in a niche of the Srisailam temple that is like the Kasibugga one. He suggests that the Kakatiyas may have presented it.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy describes the Bhairava at Kasibugga as too meek and calm, and he says that it was made in the Hoysala spirit. In his view, a later Bhairava given to the Srisailam temple by a merchant of Rajahmundry resembles it. He suggests that both were perhaps later additions.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Murthy notes that the Bhairava images at Nidadavole, Mandapaka and Vengi are not fierce either. He writes that the Hoysala example seen in the Kasibugga temple was adopted in the Chalukya and Kolani principalities alike.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Epigraphia Telanganica lists no inscription from this temple. Its only record that names a Kasibugga is a Western Chalukya inscription on a stone near Kasibugga at Kolanupaka. That record comes from the Nalgonda district volume of the Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh, and it does not belong to this temple.Epigraphia Telanganica 2023
• The 1964 Census volume records the Kasi Bugga Ranganathotsavam, a festival held in Vaisakham (April-May). On Sivaratri (February-March), devotees bathe in the well and worship Siva.Census 1961, Fairs and Festivals: Warangal
• The Warangal District Gazetteer of 1976 names the Ranganathasvami temple among the chief places of interest in Warangal city.Warangal District Gazetteer 1976