Sri Guddada Moola Virupaksha Gudi

The story of Sri Guddada Moola Virupaksha Gudi

Sri Guddada Moola Virupaksha Gudi stands within Virupaksha Temple, Hampi, so what you’re really looking at is part of the main center of pilgrimage at Hampi. The Virūpaksha Temple is in Hampi in the Vijayanagara district of Karnataka, India, on the banks of the river Tungabhadra, and it is part of the Group of Monuments at Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Britannica says the Virūpaksha Temple was built in the 7th-century and is dedicated to Virupaksha, a form of Shiva. It also says the temple was expanded by Lakkan Dandesha, a nayaka under Deva Raya II, also known as Prauda Deva Raya of the Vijayanagara Empire. That gives you the big story here: an older sacred place that was later enlarged under Vijayanagara power.

The surrounding city of Vijayanagara was the capital of the historic Vijayanagara Empire, and the ruins around you belong to that wider imperial landscape.

What to look for here is the way this smaller shrine sits inside a much larger holy complex. Since there is no separate account of this exact place, the main thing to do is read it as part of the temple setting around it, and then follow the flow of the larger pilgrimage site as you move through Hampi.