Somnathpur, a tiny village on the banks of the Kaveri, 140 kms, south-west of Bangalore."There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past, it changes not and has a touch of eternity," This place boasts of one of the last and the grandest of Hoysala monuments - the Kesava Temple built 740 years ago.By the year 1268 A.D., the year in which the Kesava temple at Somnathpur was built. The riches and splendour of the Hoysala court were already evident in their grand temples at Belur and Dvarasamudra (present day, Halebid).
The reigning monarch was Narasimha III (1254-91 A.D.) whose full regal title runs into a sizeable paragraph: "Sri Vishnuvaradhana, Pratapa Chakravarti, Hoysala Bhujabala, Sri Vira Narasimha, Maharajadhiraja, Raja Paramesvara, Sanivarasiddhi, Giridurgamalla etc.
The temple, however, was built by this celebrated army commander, Somnath. Some year ago he had founded a village on the left bank of the Kaveri River, which he named Somnathpur, after himself. All the facts are duly mentioned on the slab in old Kannada script and appear as though to have happened yesterday!
The temples in Somnathpur are not as famous as the ones in Belur and Halebid , though they all are from the same period. Somnathpur is more representative of the age, since it did not suffer destruction as much as Belur and Halebid did and hence offers a more unbroken view of period's architecture. Often it is referred to as the poor cousin of Belur and Halebid.
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