Only a few kilometres from Ramappa, Ganapuram Kota Gullu, considered one of Telangana’s least-known archaeological treasures, preserves Kakatiya grandeur and the fading echoes of a worldview that embraced each the sacred and the sensual
Revealed Date – 19 July 2026, 12:27 AM
By Amar Veluri
On a dewy winter morning, after almost 25 years, I discovered myself as soon as once more strolling towards the Ramappa Temple. A lot had modified since my final go to. I remembered a few monuments rising from an untamed panorama: mild vegetation, a couple of toddy and banyan bushes, cows and goats wandering freely by way of the premises, and farmers spreading their harvest throughout the temple grounds for drying and aeration.
It appears very totally different now. Since its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Web site, Ramappahas drawn nationwide consideration, authorities funding, and the stewardship of the Archaeological Survey Division. Improved services, paved entry roads, curated pathways, and customer infrastructure have reworked it right into a well-organised vacationer vacation spot. The temple nonetheless stands magnificent!
As we started our drive again dwelling, my driver talked about that I shouldn’t miss the Ganapuram Kota Gullu, a quiet, lesser-known, barely secluded cluster of temple ruins. I echoed his enthusiasm, and we drove about 11 kilometres northwest to achieve Ganapuram village. From there, we turned onto an unpaved street, which finally branched into one other filth monitor main us to what seemed just like the stays of an historical temple advanced.
On the best stood a small constructing with a row of stone statues organized in entrance of it, resembling a modest museum. The motive force defined that these sculptures had been excavated from the realm across the temple, and that native caretakers had as soon as hidden them throughout the Muslim invasions that adopted the autumn of the Kakatiya dynasty, hoping to guard them from destruction. A few of the statues had solely partially carved eyes, their pupils by no means opened to the world, an indication that that they had by no means been consecrated or formally unveiled for worship.
Ganapati Deva’s Legacy
The Ganapuram Kota Gullu temple advanced was constructed by Kakatiya King Ganapati Deva within the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries CE. Throughout his reign, the advanced emerged as an vital spiritual and cultural centre. Inscriptions dated 1234–35 CE document that Ganapathi Reddy, an area patron serving below the Kakatiya administration, put in the Shiva deity and donated land for the temple’s upkeep. Collectively, these particulars counsel that the cluster of shrines functioned as a ritual and cultural hub for the folks of Ganapuram.
The campus contains 22 to 24 temples, all enclosed inside a double-walled stone fortification, and therefore the title Kota Gullu (fortress of temples). On the centre stands the principle shrine, Ganapeshwaralayam, devoted to Lord Shiva. Constructed on an elevated platform, it follows the traditional Kakatiya plan: a garbhagriha (sanctum), a mukhamandapa (entrance corridor), and exquisitely sculpted exterior partitions alive with madanikas (celestial dancers), elephants, and legendary beasts carved in pink and black sandstone.
To the south of the principle shrine stands the 60-pillared natyamandapa, a dance pavilion whose maze of pillars as soon as echoed with ritual dance and music. To the north lies a smaller however unusually compelling shrine. Its platform is adorned with elephants, lotuses, and swans, however the bases of its pillars are adorned with carvings of coiled cobras, giving the impression that one thing treasured was as soon as safeguarded right here, protected by symbolic serpents and maybe sealed by way of sacred chants.
One of many partitions of this northern shrine contains a band of swans carved in the other way from the opposite swans and elephants encircling the construction. My analysis didn’t uncover any express scholarly rationalization for such directional inconsistencies in Kakatiya-style carvings. Nonetheless, drawing from broader iconographic traditions, swans (hamsas) are sometimes related to purity and religious refinement, whereas elephants (gajas) symbolise stability and worldly energy.
If these symbolic associations are prolonged to the carvings, the elephants’ constant route might symbolize continuity and structural steadiness, whereas the reversed swans may counsel a pause, reset, or turning level within the religious journey. On this context, this wall may mark the purpose the place the pradakshina (a ritualistic, directionally prescribed path across the temple) symbolically begins or ends.
Encircling these three core shrines are clusters of smaller temples, every devoted to a special deity, forming a sacred constellation across the coronary heart of the advanced. There are a couple of sculptures of three dancers with solely 4 legs carved on the principle temple, a particular motif that I had earlier observed at Fort Warangal, an obvious signature component of the Kakatiya interval.
Within the afternoon solar, as mild glistens on the pink and black sandstone carvings and weathered temple ruins, an uncanny stillness settles over the place. The silence of the encircling wilderness is damaged solely by the occasional chirping of birds or the low mooing of grazing cattle. An eerie feeling emerges from this silence, not considered one of concern, however of the lingering presence of a once-thriving civilisation within the type of stillness.
On the north-east nook of the campus stands a centuries-old banyan tree. Over the many years, its lengthy, muscular roots and vines have embraced fallen pillars and scattered stone carvings, slowly drawing them into its shadows, as if nature itself has taken duty for safeguarding what stays of a once-thriving temple neighborhood. A number of hundred metres away lies the Ganapuram lake, an enormous reservoir whose waters proceed to nourish the ecosystem surrounding the temples.
A number of hundred metres away lies the Ganapuram lake, an enormous reservoir whose waters proceed to nourish the ecosystem surrounding the temples.
Non secular Conditioning
As I used to be leaving the temple premises, a loud voice minimize by way of the silence. A small crowd gathered round a person shouting angrily at a younger couple. One of many onlookers defined that the couple had been discovered participating in an intimate act inside one of many deserted shrines.
The indignant man threatened to report them to the police. The younger girl stood trembling, tears streaming down her face, whereas the younger man tried to purpose with the accuser. However the man solely grew extra agitated, berating them for his or her “shameful behaviour.â€
I felt sorry for the younger couple, though I used to be additionally disillusioned by their selection of place. I’ve all the time regarded templesas areas of purity and divinity, and a part of me reacted instinctively to the thought of intimacy inside a sacred place. However the anthropologist in me stored difficult that response, urging me to suppose past emotion and non secular conditioning.
It was a sunny but barely chilly afternoon, the breeze transferring gently throughout the carved figures on the temple partitions. The sculptures of dancers, frozen in sensual poses, appeared to look at you at each step as you handed by way of the shrine. The 2 madanikas, with their teasing smiles and sleek stances, carried an class so placing that even Manmadha (the god of affection in Hindumythology) himself may pause for a second look. All the constellation of shrines lay in a deep, nearly meditative silence, with nobody else in sight. In such an enormous and abandoned panorama, a younger couple, maybe merely two folks in love, strolling hand in hand by way of the ruins, may have been swept away by a second of intimacy.
Did they honestly deserve public shaming? Might they not have been spoken to softly, reminded of the sanctity of the place, and requested to depart with out humiliation?
On the best way again dwelling, I ended by Navachethana Ebook Home in Hanamkonda. As I browsed by way of the cabinets, I abruptly froze. I couldn’t imagine what I used to be seeing. A e book titled Gudilo Intercourse (Intercourse in a Temple) caught my consideration. Its cowl featured one of many well-known erotic sculptures of Khajuraho. It was written by Arudra, the famend Telugu lyricist, essayist and poet. How may this be?
Earlier within the day, I had witnessed the confrontation involving the younger couple on the Ganapuram temples, and now this e book appeared earlier than me. Was it a coincidence, or was the universe nudging me to suppose extra deeply in regards to the subject?
Understanding Arudra’s type of utilizing provocative titles to compel readers, I suspected it was not a piece of erotica however quite an exploration of deeper cultural questions. I rapidly picked up the e book, slipped it between a few others, and walked to the checkout counter. The subsequent morning, with occasions at Ganapuram nonetheless contemporary in my thoughts, I started studying the e book. As I had anticipated, Arudra approached the topic from a cultural and anthropological lens.
Arudra’s Ebook
Arudra reminds us that the civilisation which constructed these temples had a really totally different relationship with the physique. He writes that in historical agrarian societies, lengthy earlier than temple tradition crystallised (pre-Aryan interval), fertility rites had been carried out brazenly below the sky as a part of the agricultural cycle. These rituals weren’t thought of shameful; quite, they symbolised the cosmic union of seed and soil, rain and earth.
As ritual tradition advanced, these ceremonies moved into sacrificial halls, considered auspicious areas for invoking fertility and prosperity. Later, temples emerged as the brand new ritual centres, and these practices discovered their method into the sanctums of shrines, the place the owner’s spouse and the chief priest enacted symbolic fertility rituals. Over generations, the devadÄsis inherited these roles, reworking them into dance, music, and ceremonial efficiency.
As society grew extra conservative, such rituals grew to become unacceptable, and their reminiscence was carved into stone, on the outer partitions of temples. This is the reason the erotic sculptures, from Khajuraho to Konark to Ramappa to the Kota Gullu, exist in any respect. They aren’t decorations; quite, they’re fossils of forgotten rituals, the final surviving traces of a worldview that noticed no contradiction between the sacred and the sensual.
Arudra factors out that each the Chandogya Upanishad and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describe the union as a yajña (sacrifice), a cosmic act, and a ritual of creation. He additionally attracts parallels with different historical cultures. He notes that in Cyprus, rituals of intimacy had been as soon as provided to the goddess Aphrodite as acts of devotion. In Babylon, each girl, no matter wealth or standing, was anticipated no less than as soon as in her life to take part in a sacred union within the temple of Mylitta, as a gesture of fertility and cosmic alignment.
These examples will not be endorsements. They’re anthropological mirrors, reminders that historical civilisations internationally understood sexuality as a ritual of creation, not an ethical failing.
Ultimate Reflections
One query continued to intrigue me: why was it needed to construct such an elaborate constellation of shrines when the majestic Ramappa Temple stands simply 11 km away? As I researched extra, I got here to the conclusion that each served totally different functions.
Ramappa was erected as a testomony to the brilliance of Kakatiya structure, a deliberate expression of their creative ambition and engineering prowess. It was immediately supervised by the highly effective normal Recherla Rudra and designed by the grasp sculptor Ramappa.
Ganapuram Kota Gullu, in contrast, stands as a crown jewel of the Kakatiyas’ emphasis on neighborhood, tradition, and faith. These shrines type a constellation of sacred areas, every serving a selected ritual objective whereas bringing collectively numerous communities to have fun a shared idand belonging.
The temple advanced functioned because the centrepiece of a broader community that built-in tribal, agrarian, and native communities into the Kakatiya state. Its location was chosen strategically, and its institution required a major land donation from the native patron Ganapathi Reddy, who additionally oversaw the consecration of the temple’s principal deity, Lord Shiva.
Returning to the incident involving the younger lovers, it isn’t the aim of this essay to guage who was proper or unsuitable. The occasions that unfolded (the encounter itself, the indignant man’s response, and my surprising discovery of Arudra’s e book) prompted me to hint the historic and cultural threads surrounding the episode. My intention has merely been to summarise the analysis and permit readers to attract their conclusions.
It will be inaccurate to counsel that the couple at Ganapuram was consciously reenacting an historical ritual. But, it’s equally attainable that the impulse to hunt intimate moments inside secluded temple areas echoes a a lot older cultural reminiscence, a faint lineage reaching again to pre Aryan fertility traditions, when the boundaries between the sacred, the sensual, and the communal had been much more fluid.
Against this, the indignant man’s outrage belongs to a a lot later ethical lineage: the conservative frameworks that developed during the last a number of centuries, formed by devotional reforms, the consolidation of territorial kingdoms, and the affect of colonial rule, finally crystallising into fashionable norms. His response emerged from a worldview that remembers solely the chapters formed by this conservative inheritance, whereas forgetting the deeper, extra advanced historical past through which temples had been as soon as vibrant social areas quite than websites of ethical policing.
Lastly, it breaks my coronary heart to see {that a} temple so huge, so deep in historical past, and so vibrant in structure and objective has didn’t seize the eye of the authorities, and consequently, stays in a dire state of neglect. The shrines are in a precarious situation, at actual threat of collapse, posing risks to guests and to the very communities who, with admirable devotion, proceed to collect no matter assets they will to reinvigorate the advanced and host spiritual occasions and congregations.
One hopes that UNESCO will finally recognise the interdependent system of temples between Ramappa and Ganapuram Kota Gullu, for they’re inseparable in spirit and performance. Ramappa is the sunshine, however Ganapuram Kota Gullu is the collective reservoir that fuels that mild!
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