Attimabbe of Lakkundi, Called Danachintamani, Built the Brahma Jinalaya Named in an Inscription of 1007, Backed the Poet Ranna and Is Credited With 1,500 Jain Temples

A stone slab at Lakkundi, a village about seven miles south-east of Gadag in Karnataka, records a gift of land to the Jain temple that a woman named Attimabbe had built there, after she petitioned the Chalukya king. The editors of South Indian Inscriptions, the Archaeological Survey’s published series of southern inscriptions, print it as No. 52 of volume XI, part I. They read the date as the month of Phalguna in the Saka year 929 and give the English equivalent as 27 February 1007. Lakkundi was then called Lokkigundi, and the record names the temple the Brahma Jinalaya.

She is remembered under a title, Danachintamani. Dana means a gift, and chintamani is the wish-granting jewel of Indian tradition, so the title reads as “the jewel among givers”. The Kannada resource site of the Central Institute of Indian Languages calls her one of the most renowned women in ancient Karnataka. It says she spent all her wealth on religion and art and was given the title for her ascetic and altruistic life.

What the slab at Lakkundi says

The editors describe No. 52 as cut on a slab set up near the Jain basti (temple) and composed in Sanskrit and Kannada. It names Ahavamalladeva as the reigning king but carries the date Saka 929, which makes the king Irivabedanga Satyashraya. The editors note that Ahavamalla was a surname borne by more than one king of the family, not a mark of Taila II alone, as had been supposed.

The grant itself is a gift of land made by Attimabbe, wife of the chief Nagadeva (a son of Dhalla, of the Vaji family), to the Jaina temple she had built. It was made into the hands of her teacher, Arhanandi Pandita of the Surasta gana and the Kaurur gachchha, two Jain monastic lineages. Her son, the general Padevala Taila, was then governing the Masavadi country.

In their introduction the editors add a point about the king. The inscription says Attimabbe made her request soon after he conquered the whole Gurjara country, and they call this the first inscription to mention Irivabedanga’s conquest of the Gurjaras. They also say the epigraph records certain miracles connected with her life, without detailing them in their summary.

The date has a wrinkle that the editors work through. By their calculation the festival named in the record, Nandishvara-ashtami of Phalguna in Saka 929, fell on a Tuesday, 17 February 1008, but on a Thursday the year before, 27 February 1007. They give the second as the English equivalent, which matches the year 1007 usually quoted for the temple.

A second slab, No. 53, lies in four pieces in the compound of the Jain basti. The editors call it badly mutilated and almost a copy of No. 52 except for the last few lines. It also names Nagadeva, Padevala Taila and Attiyabbe, the spelling the editors use for her name, and says she obtained the royal charter from King Ahavamalla.

Two families of ministers and generals

The Jain Journal’s 1994 appraisal, reading the same inscription, says it introduces Attimabbe as the daughter of Mallapa, the wife of Nagadeva and the mother of Paduvala Taila, also called Anniga. Nagadeva was the eldest son of Dhallapa, a minister of Taila II. The article says the inscription credits Dhallapa with victories over Vengi, Konkana and Malwa, and describes both families as Jain generals and ministers who helped Taila II to power. It adds that of Mallapa’s eight children, only Attimabbe stands out in the records.

The SII editors draw the family story from the inscription and from Ranna’s poems. Attimabbe and her younger sister Gundamabbe were both married to Nagadeva. When Nagadeva died, Gundamabbe ascended his funeral pyre. Attimabbe lived on and spent the rest of her life in pious works, which the editors say earned her the title Danachintamani. The Jain Journal article records that Ranna presents a widow with two courses, to follow her husband in death or to take the Jina vow, and says Attimabbe took the second.

Ranna and the poem written for her

The poet Ranna wrote his Ajitapurana, a Kannada work on the life of the second Jain tirthankara, Ajitanatha, at Attimabbe’s request. The SII editors say so on the poet’s own declaration and report that the poem was complete by Saka 915, which is 993 CE. They add that the inscription’s details about her family are “corroborated” by the Ajitapurana and by Ranna’s Gadayuddha.

The Jain Heritage Centres’ page on Ranna says the Ajitapurana runs to twelve chapters, with seven on Ajitanatha and three on the emperor Sagara, and that the first chapter is given over to portraying Attimabbe. The same page says Ranna was born in 949 and received the title Kavichakravarti, “emperor among poets”, from the Chalukya king Tailapa, and that Tailapa’s son Satyashraya gave him shelter. It says Attimabbe was the one who moved Ranna to write the Ajitapurana.

The Jain Heritage Centres also record that the poet Brahmashiva praised her in his Samayaparikshe, and list her titles, among them Gunadakhani, “a treasure house of great qualities”. The page counts seven or eight inscriptions put up after her death that praise her giving.

Counting her gifts

The sources count her gifts in more than one way. The SII editors, summarising the inscription, say she is credited with having built 1,500 Jaina temples in different parts of the kingdom. The Jain Journal article, citing verses 30 and 31 of No. 52, reads the record as 1,500 Jinalayas, with a more splendid one at Lakkundi in addition, and 1,500 images of the Jina given for home worship with gold bells and lamps. The Central Institute’s resource site says she distributed 1,500 gold Jina images studded with jewels. The Jain Heritage Centres say 1,500 gold Tirthankara idols.

For the manuscripts the sources split on the figure itself. The Central Institute’s site and the Jain Heritage Centres both say she had scribes write 1,000 palm-leaf copies of the poet Ponna’s Shantipurana, a Kannada life of the sixteenth tirthankara, and distributed them to scholars. The Jain Journal, citing the same two verses, says 100. The Jain Heritage Centres say Ponna wrote the work under the patronage of her father Mallapa and his brother, and that Ponna was a court poet of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III, who reigned from 939 to 968. The counts rest on how later writers read a few verses, so the safe summary is that the inscription and the tradition after it credit her with a very large number of temples, images and copies, and that the exact figures are read differently.

The temple at Lakkundi today

Henry Cousens, whose volume for the Archaeological Survey appeared in 1926, calls the old Jaina temple at the west end of the village the oldest building at Lakkundi. He notes that it is built of a fine chloritic schist, a dark stone that carves more crisply than the coarser sandstone of the earlier temples at Aihole and Pattadakal. Cousens does not mention Attimabbe in the text read for this article. The link between the building and her rests on the slab set up near the Jain basti and on the name Brahma Jinalaya in the record.

He saw that a seated Mahavira image, 4 feet 4 inches high, had been broken and thrown outside the shrine, and he describes a well-carved loose image of Brahma in the inner hall. The Live History India account says the temple’s name probably comes from a four-headed Brahma statue and that the original Mahavira statue, headless, now stands outside. The Jain Heritage Centres, in their page on the temple, describe a 3-foot Mahavira idol as its spiritual heart.

Cousens also reports an inscription on a pilaster by the door of the inner hall dated Saka 1094, which is 1172 CE. That is later than 1007, and the Jain Heritage Centres date the building to the 11th to 12th century, a span that allows for later work.

Lakkundi changed hands after her time. Cousens writes that the Hoysala king Ballala II made it his northern capital in 1191, after defeating a general of the Western Chalukya king Someshvara IV. The Hoysala temples are covered in the article on Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura.

The Archaeological Survey of India lists the Jain Basti at Lakkundi among its centrally protected monuments, under the Dharwad Circle. Jain monks’ rock-cut cells from a far earlier age are the subject of the article on Udayagiri and Khandagiri.

What carries her name now

The Central Institute’s resource site says the Government of Karnataka instituted an annual award in her name for a woman writer. The Jain Heritage Centres report that the Mangalore Postal Division of the Department of Posts released a picture postcard on Danachintamani Attimabbe on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava in 2022, in a series titled Jina Ratna Bhushanaru and sponsored by the Hombuja Jain Math.