HIS-STORY

On the third day I decided to explore all the other unseen places in Hampi. I with my 4 friends rented bicycles and started off from Virupaksha temple. After visiting a few sites, we reached to the ruins of HariHara Palace. The only reason we could know that there once a palace existed was just a sign board indicating towards the ruins. As a history lover, I entered the huge campus of the palace. To our surprise we could not see a single soul in that area. Roaming around, trying to figure out what the structures were, we tried to locate some information boards but our attempts were in vain.

After waiting for 15 to 20 minutes, we saw two tourists accompanied with a guide, coming towards the ruins. I followed them and tried to listen to the stories about the place, but I could not understand properly. Finally in front of the mosque I stopped the guide and requested him to tell me about the place.

Mosque - Harihara Palace

 The guide told me the history of the place. He said that the palace once belonged to king Harihara who founded the empire of Hampi. He told a few things about the dynasty. One thing I found very interesting that next to the palace was the temple like structure. He said, the king had hidden his treasure in that chamber. He made it look like a temple so that nobody would touch it.

Hajararama Temple

After talking to the guide, we were sitting on the foundation of the palace and noting down the information we had gathered, when a person from archaeological department came to us. He thought we were sketching, which was not allowed. We took the advantage of this and asked the person about this place. He told us detailed information about the place. But one thing was not matching with the information we got from the guide. The treasure hiding chamber. The archaeological department officer completely denied this information. He said the temple like structure was actually a temple known as HajaraRama temple, which was built for the royal family. According to him, there was only one secret chamber which was full of weapons built at the backside of the palace.

In an half an hour, we found two entirely different stories about the same place, and both from authorised sources. There I realised, why history is explained as HIS-Story. Though history has evidences of the past, the facts are always unknowingly manipulated by one’s interpretations. And thus every place has thousands of legends.