Kalleshwara Temple, Hire Hadagali

The main foundation record is an old Kannada inscription on a slab in front of the temple, published in South Indian Inscriptions, volume IX (no. 118). Dated in Saka 978, probably 21 April 1057 CE, it traces the genealogy of the Chalukya kings and states that Demarasa, also titled Vitachakravartin, son of Trivikramadeva of the village of Posavadangile, built a temple and installed the god Demeshvara, granting land for its upkeep. Merchant and village assemblies added an oil-mill and other income for worship. The same record names the temple Bhimeshvara-Demeshvara; the name Kalleshwara is a later popular one.

A further section of the inscription, dated in the 31st year of the Chalukya-Vikrama era (about 1108 CE, in the reign of Vikramaditya VI), records additional gifts by several officials and states that one Udayaditya had the temple built on Demarasa's orders. Wikipedia, citing the historian Ajay Sinha, mentions a third Kannada inscription of about 1212 CE from the reign of the Hoysala king Veera Ballala II.

Hire Hadagali is also known for an older find: Rea recorded that he discovered at this village the copper-plate grant of the Pallava king Shivaskandavarman, later published in Epigraphia Indica, and the district gazetteer lists these 'Hirehadagalli plates' among the important records of the district.

Architecture and sacred features

Rea found that the plan had been altered by later mud and masonry walls. In his account the principal shrine, with its linga, stands at the west end, with a richly carved doorway flanked by pierced stone windows and an unusually narrow antechamber, opening into an enclosed hall with four finely carved central pillars and a Nandi on a raised platform. Foundations in front show that a larger pillared hall once existed, and a second shrine faces the main one from the east. The tower over the western shrine survived almost complete in Rea's time, its storeys rising in a stepped pyramid to a circular finial; Wikipedia, following Adam Hardy, says the tower is a later reconstruction.

The outer walls are divided into projecting bays with miniature shrine-shaped niches, slender pilasters and pierced, lace-like carving, much of which has broken away. Rea recorded images in the hall of Mahishasuramardini, Shiva with Parvati, Sarasvati, Ganesha and a carved Narayana (Vishnu). Wikipedia adds that the doorway to the vestibule shows door guardians, Rati and Manmatha, with Gajalakshmi on the lintel, and that the open Nandi hall outside has been converted into a shrine.