Magadi is a town and
taluk
A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka () is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administrative ...
located in
Bengaluru South District ,
Karnataka
Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...
, India.
History
As per a legend, Magadi was founded in 1139 by a
Chola king, who, in the course of an expedition, heard that in early times it had been the residence of some saints. Magadi later passed into the hands of
Hoysala
The Hoysala Kingdom was a kingdom originating from the Indian subcontinent that ruled most of what is now Karnataka, India, Karnataka, parts of Tamilnadu and South-Western Telangana between the 11th and the 14th centuries Common Era, CE. The c ...
s, before it became a part of the
Vijayanagara Empire
The Vijayanagara Empire, also known as the Karnata Kingdom, was a late medieval Hinduism, Hindu empire that ruled much of southern India. It was established in 1336 by the brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I of the Sangama dynasty, belongi ...
. The town was expanded in area during the reign of
Achyuta Deva Raya, who had appointed Samanta Raya to manage the affairs of the district that Magadi was a part of. Samanta Raya received the town as a
grant from the king in return for his fortification of
Savandurga, who had it possession from 1543 to 1571, before it was passed on to his son Sampaja Raya. Attempts to plunder the town by Gangappa Nayak, a watchman during Chikka Raya's reign, was thwarted by
Kempe Gowda I, who put him to death, before taking over the town. Gowda later retired to Magadi and the town came to associated with his family in the years to come.
Epigraphically, the history of Magadi is much earlier as the earliest epigraphical document is from the Kalya village dated paleographically to the 550 CE. It is documented in Akshara Bhandara, a digital compendium of Kannada inscriptions by the Mythic society. The inscriptions of Magadi are mostly documented in Volume 9 of ''
Epigraphia carnatica'', recently discovered inscriptions are published in journals like Itihasa darpana and the journals of Mythic Society. Among the significant inscriptions is the Vaishnava-Jaina conflict resolution inscription documented in the
Kalya village, dated to 1368 CE, that records the conflict between the followers of the two religions and the subsequent resolution of it by king
Bukkaraya II.
Magadi was captured by the
Mysore army in 1728 and the chief carried prisoner to
Srirangapatna, where he died, the last of his line. The 1875 Gazetteer of Bangalore noted the population of Magadi to be around 4,000 and that it compirsed 650 houses.
Geography
Magadi is located at . It has an average elevation of 925
metre
The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
s (3034
feet).
Demographics
India
census
A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...
, Magadi had a population of 27,605. Males constitute 50% of the population and females 50%. Magadi has an average literacy rate of 69%, male literacy is 74%, and female literacy is 65%.
Notable people
*
Siddalingaiah, Kannada poet
See also
*
Ajjahalli, Magadi
*
Ajjanahalli, Magadi
*
Kalya Inscriptions
*
Sankighatta
*
Monuments at Magadi
References
{{reflist
Cities and towns in Bangalore Rural district
Buildings and structures in Bengaluru Urban district
Tourist attractions in Bengaluru Urban district