Kotilingeshwara – A quick little trip.

On the 30th of March 2008, we were returning back to Bangalore from a family trip to Chittoor. Since we had started our return journey quite early in the morning, we were quite ahead of schedule and were driving back at a very liesurely pace. On a couple of earlier trips along this route, we had come across a tourism department board indicating several places of interest near Kolar.

This time when we came across the same board, we thought of taking a diversion and checking out one of places mentioned, called ‘Kotilingeshwara’.

Kotilingeshwara is situated in Kammasandra Village of Kolar district in Karnataka. The temple is about 6 kms from the Kolar Gold Fields. There was a tourism department board that indicates the road that leads to the temple. ‘Koti’ means one crore (10 million) and this place is called ‘Kotilingeshwara’ since the idea was to install 10 million Shivalingas at this place.

The first Linga was installed by the founder of this temple – Swamy Sambhashiva Murthy on the 10th of October,1980. Eversince, scores of Shivalingas of all sizes have been installed all around the temple and the surrounding areas. Some of the bigger lingas in the temple have signboards mentioning the name of the devotees who got them installed and we came across plenty of famous names including Karnataka politicians, Film stars, big businessmen and other notable personalities.

The other claims to fame of this place are that the world’s biggest Shivaling (a concrete structure)…

and a huge Nandi (also made of concrete).

Since there is nothing much of an archeological or historical importance at this place… a visit is recommended if you are religiously inclined, or just curious.