Shri Marikamba Devi Temple Sirsi, Karnataka

Sirsi Marikamba Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Marikamba Devi ( Durga Devi ), located in Sirsi, Karnataka, It is also known as Marigudi, It was built in 1688, Sirsi Shri Marikamba Devi is “elder sister” of all Marikamba Devi’s in Karnataka.

Features
The temple’s façade, a 19th-century addition, is painted blue. After one enters through the façade, there is courtyard in the middle, which has cloisters surrounding it. The cloisters are filled with images of deities from the Hindu epics. The changes made inside the temple have hidden any evidence of older structures. The sanctum sanctorum has the central image of a fierce form of the goddess Durga, multi-armed (eight shoulders), riding a tiger and killing a demon. It is believed that the 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) image was retrieved from a pond on the road to Hangal. The temple has very special paintings of murals in Kaavi art, an art form which was popular in the coastal Konkan region of Karnataka. In this art form, now extinct, the top plastered layer of the mural was first dyed with a red pigment, which when removed revealed a lower white layer of plaster over which the murals were created.

Worship
The main priest at the temple belongs to the carpenter, or Vishvakarma, caste. Mahatma Gandhi visited Sirsi in 1934 but he refused to visit the temple, as animal sacrifice was a prevalent ancient practice at the temple; the sacrifice was in the form of offering of he-buffalo as a sacrifice to appease the goddess. A he-buffalo was specially bred for offering as a sacrifice to the deity during the biennial Rathayatra. Following the protest by Gandhi, there was a social movement in the town to abolish animal sacrifice, this movement was spearheaded by Keshwain, chief trustee of the temple, in association with Vitthal Rao Hodike, a teacher and dedicated Gandhian of the town. objectives of this movement were fulfilled.