Please leave your footwear outside
Belur, one of
However,
next to the main deity, by the side entrance, is a special enclosure
that contains a pair of giant leather slippers. Almost as large as the
main deity itself.
Leather slippers in a Hindu temple?
Yes.
Even though you are not allowed to wear footwear inside the temple.
According to the local guide, the land that the temple stands on was donated to the king by two cobblers: Chenna and Vela.Cobblers donating land to a King? These two must have been the Nike and Adidas of 12th Century Karnataka.
Chenna has the main temple of Belur - Chennakeshava named after him and Vela has the whole town, the capital, Velapuri (corrupted to Belur, as it is known now) named after him.
How's that?
And cobblers? Wasn't that one of the castes that were not allowed to enter temples?
The
caste system must certainly been different in the 12th century AD.
Maybe cobblers were providing a very essential service at that point of
time and caste discrimination wasn't the brutal social evil it became
in the recent past and it still is in modern
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