Western Ganga dynasty

A long minor dynasty

The Western Gangas held the country south of the Kadambas, first from Kolar and later from Talakāḍ on the Kaveri. For most of their history they were subordinate — to the Chalukyas of Bādāmi, then to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas — while retaining their own line, their own inscriptions and a distinct regional character. Their durability across six centuries of shifting overlordship is itself notable.

Their charters are in Sanskrit and Kannada, and the dynasty's patronage of Kannada literature is among the earliest on record.

Jainism and Gommaṭeśvara

The Gangas were the principal royal patrons of Jainism in Karnataka, and Śravaṇabeḷagoḷa — the hill where tradition places the death of Candragupta Maurya under the teacher Bhadrabāhu — became the centre of Digambara Jainism in the south under their rule.

Around 981 CE Cāmuṇḍarāya, minister and general to the Ganga king, had a standing figure of Bāhubali carved from a single outcrop of granite on the hill at Śravaṇabeḷagoḷa. The Gommaṭeśvara stands about eighteen metres high, naked, with creepers carved twining up the legs to show the years of motionless meditation. It is still anointed in the mahāmastakābhiṣeka ceremony once every twelve years.

Ganga rule ended around the beginning of the eleventh century when Rājarāja Chola annexed Talakāḍ and the Gangavāḍi country to the Chola empire.