PLACES

MAHULI

Mahuli (pop. 1848) is a village in Khanapur taluka 16.09 km (ten miles) north of Vite on the Vite-Mayani road. It has a remarkable temple dedicated to Kadamba Devi. The temple is in the centre of the village, though not easy to find out. It is partially in a dilapidated condition. It is about 12.19 metres (40 ft.) long by about 6.09 metres (20 ft.) broad and consists of a hall or Mandap with a shrine and vestibule, but without a spire. It is built of gray trap on a platform about 3.04 metres (ten feet) above the average level of the village streets. It is closely surrounded by mud houses and therefore seen to less advantage than many of the old temples which are usually found in vacant spaces and often outside the villages. It is raised on a stone plinth about 0.914 metre (three feet) high, the face of which is cut in a lozenge pattern. The walls are different from the usual type of Hemad-panti temples in the district being elaborately carved externally, specially the shrine wall. The hall or mandap is 1.85 m² (20 ft. square) and the walls reach to the roof not as usual left solely fop support to the pillars. The line of the front or east wall is straight and contains a square entrance but is in bad repair, the carved work nearly defaced and everywhere blocked up with mud and stones put in to prop it up. The side walls, which also contain two square entrances, are as usual rather wider at the centre, the outline slightly resembling the cruciform. The stones are pointed in beaded and tooth work and floral decorations are faintly carved on them. The vestibule to the shrine is about 1.52x5.79 metres (five feet by nineteen). The shrine is star-shaped and about 4.57x6.09 metres (15'x20') at the widest part. At the west, north and south sides are flat faces connected by zigzags showing five corners. These walls are carved in much the same way as the hall or mandap walls but far more elaborately. The faces contain niches with images of deities fairly well executed. The image in the north niche is Mahisasur Devi riding on a buffalo and holding the child Parasurama in her lap, the image on the west is of Narsimha, the man-lion; and the image on the south is Ganapati and sadanana or Kartikeya. The roof has heavy caves of carved stone but scarcely projecting and modern brick parapet. The hall or mandap inside has four pillars in the centre carved in the usual pattern. The shafts are of a single block and about 2.13 metres (seven feet) high. The basement is square and the rest of the rock is cut into cylindrical square and other sections all carved in floral and beaded patterns. Under these four pillars is the round slab called rangasila for religious dancing and the like. Embedded in the walls are twelve their semi-detached pillars of the same pattern connected with the roof by crochets of a scroll pattern. The roof is divided by cross beams into nine compartments cut in the lozenge pattern. But the most noteworthy thing in the interior is the sort of screen which divides the shrine or gabhara vestibule from the mandap. It is of pierced stone work very elaborately cut in lozenges of a sort of tooth pattern exceedingly elegant and striking. The shrine is a plain square chamber and contains nothing but two projecting slabs or stone symbols of Devi with the ling and salunka of Maha-dev in front. Though so small inside, the carving of the temple is superior to anything in the district. The temple is said to have been built by a kasar or bangle-maker more than a thousand years ago. A branch of the Kasar's family is said to reside at present in Kolhapur without any connection with Mahuli.

Mahuli has two primary schools, a high school, a primary teachers' training college and a vasatigrha run by the Rayat Siksan Samstha. It is served by a multipurpose co-operative society, a sub-post office, veterinary and civil dispensaries and a maternity home. To the east of the village at a distance of only 1.60 km (one mile) is the famous shrine of Revan Siddh.

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