Padur Gururaja Bhatt

A distinguished son of Tulunadu

By Prof. A.V. Narasimha Murthy, former Head, Department of Ancient History & Archaeology, University of Mysore

Padur Gururaja Bhatt was known to me more than half a century ago when I was a Professor at the Department of P.G. Studies and Research in Ancient History and Archaeology at Manasagangothri, Mysuru. Dr. Gururaja Bhatt was working as the Principal of Saint Milagres College, Kallianpura in Dakshina Kannada. He was slightly elder to me in age. We became good friends. He used to come to Mysuru to attend Academic Council and Senate meetings and normally he used to stay with me. We used to discuss academic matters and research methodology.

Once he expressed his desire to do doctoral research and I took him to my professor Dr. M. Seshadri. I told the Professor that Bhatt wants to work for his Ph.D under his guidance. As usual Professor asked him to prepare a synopsis and meet him after two weeks. Bhatt requested my help to prepare the synopsis. He was very vehement that he would do research on Tulunadu almost identical with Dakshina Kannada including some parts of North Kanara (Honnavara) and Western Ghats. Bhatt prepared a synopsis of about 25 pages and according to Professor Seshadri asked him to prepare the synopsis in 5 pages. Though a reluctant Bhatt agreed. Later Bhat prepared the thesis and got the degree. It was a huge thesis and contained everything on South Kanara and it almost looked like an encyclopaedia on Tulunadu, which has not been excelled by anybody so far.

At this stage it is desirable to understand the meaning and connotation of the word Tulu or Tulunadu. While some derive it from Turu (cow) and others say it denoted soft soil. Still others feel that new people migrated to this area and their language Tulu which was perhaps closer to Dravidian. According to Skanda Purana, Tulunadu was the area of the great Parasurama. It’s antiquity is taken to the time of Ashoka (Satiyaputra). Ptolemy mentions Olokhoyra and this is a part of Tulunadu. Tamil Sangam literature also has a reference to this area as Tuludesha. Their emblem was fish or double fish and their gold coins contain double fish, lampstand and purnakumbha (pot of plenty). Worship of Bhutas (devils or ghosts) is a unique practice of this area. Belmannu copper plate is their earliest copper plate.

Bhatt was not an arm-chair archaeologist. He was a great explorer and saw every village of Tulunadu. Once he invited me to his house and the next morning he took me along with him for exploration. By that time the fame of Bhatt had spread and he was welcomed by culture-loving villagers to discover inscriptions and explain their importance. They used to give him food and he used to stay with them and collect information about villages. Many inscriptions and coins were discovered by Bhatt this way.

There used to be a rural transport service called Shankar Transport. Its owner, after seeing the selfless service of professor Bhatt, had ordered that Bhat will travel in his buses free of cost and he may get into the bus wherever he was and get down whenever he wanted. The drivers of these busses were great admirers of Bhatt and when I accompanied him on some of these trips, I was also a free traveller. They used to say that your friend is our friend!

Bhatt was a self-made scholar. His magnum opus on History of Tulunadu is a unique work where typological study is made and this was not done by many people during that period. For example, in his book he explains the different typological differences in the iconography of Ganesha or Durga or Shiva. On the basis of the attributes, the number of hands and heads of various gods and goddesses he would make typological classifications. This unique methodology had been introduced by the famous art historian A. K. Coomaraswamy but nobody had used this methodology in their research. Thus Bhatt may be considered first to make use of this unique methodology.

Dr. Bhatt was not a rich person to print this huge book on the land of his birth. He believed in the dictum Janani Janmabhumishca svargadapi gariyasi (mother and mother land are superior to svarga or heaven). His love for his homeland was such that after writing his work, he approached some publishers who did not take it up thinking that it will not sell. They refused to print and publish it. He did not get dejected from this but his resolution became stronger. He approached many banks but they all laughed at it because they were prepared to give a loan for building a house but not for printing a book. Not deterred by this, Bhatt took a personal loan and agreed to return the loan in six months and got the book printed. The banks were demanding payment of interest. At that time Bhatt approached me to help him and I asked him to come to Mysore with about one hundred copies of his book.

As I was in the Mysore University, I had some influence in local colleges and we sold them some copies. Then I took him to many Udupi Hotels in Mysore and Bangalore and began to disturb them in their collection of Hotel bills. They felt that we are a nuisance and buying a copy of the book by paying Rs. 200 would be the best way of disposing us off. Any way we sold many copies. Thus Bhatt was very happy and he thanked me profusely for this work. He invited me to the Krishna Mutt at Udupi and got me the privilege of having the prestigious Chaukioota where the Udupi Swamijis also take their lunch. The special attraction in those days was that atleast over 60 items of different types of sweets were served. I had this honour because of Gururaja Bhatt. After lunch, he introduced me to the Swamiji and he blessed me with a shawl and a wooden kadagolu or churning rod which contains the carving of Udupi Sri Krishna with a long churning rod and this is a prized possession in my show case. I show this to my friends and tell them that this was given by the paryaya Swamiji of Udupi. This also reminds me of Dr. Bhatt.

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