Siddhesvara Temple

Detail

• Rama Rao places the temple inside the old citadel of Anmakonda. The citadel also contains the Padmakshi temple.Rama Rao 1966
• Gopalakrishna Murthy describes the pedestal of the Siddheswara linga as crude reddish-white granite. He attributes the pedestal to Beta II, who built the Betesvaram temple.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• Gopalakrishna Murthy groups the Siddhesvara temple with early shrines that carry a stepped pyramidal sikhara.Gopalakrishna Murthy 1964
• An unfinished Sanskrit poem praising the city of Ekasila is cut on Siddhesvara Gutta, a hill about one and a half miles south of Hanamakonda. The editors date the poem to the reign of Pratapa Rudra.Epigraphia Telanganica 2023
• K. Lakshmi Ranjanam (1960) describes the poem on Ekasila as cut on a hill near the Siddhesvara temple. Manavalli Ramakrishna Kavi, who published the poem in 1924, suggested that a Saiva teacher of a matha on the Siddhesvara hill began it. Ramakrishna Kavi judged that its letters resemble those of the time of Ganapati Deva and Rudradeva.Siddhesvara Charitra (ed. 1960) · Epigraphia Telanganica 2023
• The poem survives as 37 verses in the simple Anushtubh metre. The poet wrote it without any labial letters, a form that Sanskrit critics call niroshthya. The verses describe the Andhra country, its paddy fields and the city of Ekasila.Epigraphia Telanganica 2023 · Parabrahma Sastry 1981 (Telugu)
• Parabrahma Sastry records that Manavalli Ramakrishna Kavi first published the poem in the Telugu journal Bharati in September 1924.Parabrahma Sastry 1981 (Telugu)
• The Siddhesvara Charitra, a Telugu poem of about 1600, opens with a legend of this temple. In the legend Siva comes down from Kailasa to a hill near Hanumakonda and stays there as Siddhesvara.Siddhesvara Charitra (ed. 1960)
• The poem places the goddess Padmakshi on a hillock to the west of Siddhesvara and the goddess Bhadresvari to the east. It also places a lake to the south of the hill. The poet, Kase Sarvappa, lived at Hanumakonda and dedicated his poem to Siddhesvara, not to a royal patron.Siddhesvara Charitra (ed. 1960)
• Lakshmi Ranjanam doubts that the temple is as old as the legend claims. He suggests that the god became prominent after the Jains of Hanumakonda declined, or as a rival to their faith.Siddhesvara Charitra (ed. 1960)
• The editors of the Siddhesvara Gutta poem describe a standing Jain Tirthankara in relief on the rock face opposite the inscription. A damaged mandapa with four pillars stands between the two rock faces.Epigraphia Telanganica 2023