Stories of Bangalore
Bangalore has been a cultural mixing-pot since the most ancient antiquity, as its legends and stories show
In the deep South of the Indian Subcontinent, kingdoms vied to control the lucrative spice trade flowing in from Southeast Asia to the East Coast, from where it would be transported by land and sea to the West Coast and sold to Arabs and Europeans.
One fine day in 1218 CE, one of these South Indian monarchs led a hunting expedition from a strategically positioned border town near the Tamil country, called The Land of The Guards, or Benga-Val-Oru. This settlement provided a vital strategic function, commanding the East-West trade route and acting as a first outpost to keep an eye on his southern rivals. It was small but prosperous, with Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada-speaking merchants.
Even the mightiest monarch can make a silly mistake, and so the man who claimed the title of Emperor of the South (“Dakshina Chakravarti”) found himself separated from his guards and lost in a jungle of benga (Indian kino) trees, below a canopy so thick he couldn’t even see the stars, let alone the ruins of temples even more ancient than the little town he had set off from that morning.
As he heard the shrieks of ghouls and beasts, and perhaps the lonely roar of a tiger, may well have thought he would die that night.
Perhaps he decided it would be a good idea to climb one of those ubiquitous benga trees, renowned for their healing properties in Ayurvedic medicine. From thirty metres up, he could see the stars and orient himself. Or perhaps he saw a dim glow of a cooking fire, and decided it was more likely to be one of his subjects’ homes than the lure of a flesh-eating rakshasa or trick-playing yaksha.
Stumbling through the jungle, muttering prayers and snapping twigs, the monarch came to a rude little hut in a clearing. An old woman squatted by the fire, stirring a pot. She had probably heard him coming from a mile off, and could tell from his clothing and bearing that he was a great lord. With a smile, she handed him a bowl of boiled beans.
Starving and relieved, he probably enjoyed the greatest meal of his life. The next morning his scouts would have found him; in honour of the old woman, the monarch announced that the jungle would be cleared and a new town founded, Benda-Kal-Uru, the Land of the Boiled Beans. Wittily enough, it was similar to the garrison town of Benga-Val-Uru (the Land of the Guards) and paid tribute to the benga trees too.
Ballala II, King of the Hoysalas, builder, general, and poet, was called Kavichakravarti (Emperor of Poets) for a reason.
In the Indian subcontinent, time and tide wait for no dynasty. The once-mighty Hoysalas, the family of Ballala II, were destroyed by the invasions of the Turkic Sultans of Delhi, and one of their former vassals established a massive new Empire to dominate the peoples of the South, whether Tamil, Telugu, or Kannada: Vijayanagara, the City of Victory, a place with its own fascinating stories (link). One day a vassal of this new Empire, a local chieftain (nayaka) who called himself the Lord of Yelahanka, a little village near the Land of the Boiled Beans, came to the mighty capital to request a boon of his overlord.
Picture this: Followed by a little army of retainers, the lord would have entered the great city of Vijayanagara to what he thought was a mighty fanfare, with half a dozen musicians merrily beating away at drums, clashing cymbals, and playing the pipes. He brought with him bags of gold, and baskets of spices for his overlord. But aside from a few urchins and beggars, and the minor functionary assigned to take him to the palace, nobody at the gate would even have paid him attention! His parade had been overshadowed by a great caravan of merchants, carrying baskets of jewels on camels — the smallest one of which could have paid for his entire band of toadies.
He would have been kept waiting for weeks before the imperial court would deign to receive him, which may have spent he spent despondently wandering around the parks and markets, gazing forlornly at the city’s mansions, temples, and seven shining white walls. How could his dominions ever hope to match the teeming multitudes of this, the greatest city on earth? All he could do was hope the emperor left him and his dreams in peace.
So when he was finally led to the Presence, to Rama-On-Earth, the King of Kings, he would have prostrated himself with the utmost humility, reciting the most overflowing salutations and protestations of loyalty. He begged the Most Benevolent and Just Monarch of the Seven Seas and the Seven Continents, He Whose Fame Had Ascended the Summit of Mount Meru, to grant him permission to found a city and a stone fort to protect the small fief which His Imperial Majesty had seen fit to grant him.
“Build a mud fort.” said the Presence.
It’s something, thought the nayaka. I shall build my little trading town and hope I am remembered some day when there is no longer an Emperor in Vijayanagara.
Kempegowda headed back to The Land of the Boiled Beans.
The benga jungle had burned for days, urged on by the sacrificial fires and the chanting of priests as Kempegowda ceremonially ploughed the earth of his new city with four pairs of consecrated bulls, one for each cardinal direction, on an auspicious day in 1537.
As the embers cooled and the city planners laid out the four thoroughfares around which the markets (pete) would be built, Kempegowda set out to build a wall. The consecrated bulls, bedecked in jewellery and fine cloths, had walked through the cheering villages around the new city, one bull for each gate. Kempegowda followed with his soldiers, scattering coins and being showered with flowers and salutations from his people, as musicians beat their drums and blew their trumpets.
The city was planned to command the trade routes to the Tamil heartlands, on an ancient trading post that had for centuries been home to merchant communities. Merchants and traders from all over the South would be a vital part of it from its very inception. It would be sustained by the produce of the villages around it, and enclosed by a mud fort, surrounded by a moat. “This far shall my city grow, and no further,” announced Kempegowda, in the understatement of the millennium (though of course he could not have known that at the time).
“This far shall my city grow, and no further,” announced Kempegowda.
But the construction of a wall was no easy task. The south gate kept collapsing and Kempegowda was desperate to complete it before his lurking rivals attacked the new town. The priests advised that a human sacrifice was needed to appease the local deities.
Kempegowda drew the line at that, but his sister didn’t feel that way. At the dead of night she left the palace and walked to the collapsed gate. There she slashed her own throat, spilling the blood onto the red earth and the bricks of the collapsed gate.
Bengaluru, as we know it, was born.
Time churned on, history leapt forward in leaps and bounds. No one is exactly sure which Kempegowda was responsible for really establishing the city (Kempegowda I, his son, his grandson?). Was the same Kempegowda the one who planned it and built the walls? Were they different people? Or did the city grow organically and have foundation legends ascribed to it later? Nor can the name of the city be traced with exact accuracy. My account is a fictionalised version of actual tales told about its founding.
Bengaluru was captured by the Wodeyar dynasty of Mysore, who were (temporarily) overthrown by the brilliant general Hyder Ali and his son, Tipu Sultan. They led the last conquest of the remnants of the Vijayanagar Empire, and held the British at bay for a time. But the British defeated them eventually, and “Bangalore” became a outpost of Britain, which accounts for much of its colonial-style architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Bengaluru has been at a strategic, economic and cultural crossroads for hundreds of years (as should be evident from its turbulent and interesting stories). It’s an inherently cosmopolitan centre, with the modern “swalpa adjust maadi” being merely the latest iteration in an ethos that has lasted since its foundation. Many of its citizens today speak at least four languages. Temples, mosques, and churches sit peacefully next to massive glass and steel IT parks. And today, as the prospective Silicon Valley of an India with global aspirations, it has many lessons for us, as citizens, to learn.
“Swalpa adjust maadi!”
