Shanti Sagara is located in Sulakere of Kerebilachiya village in Channagiri taluk of Davangere district of Karnataka state. Shanti Sagar, also known as Sulekere, is the second largest man-made lake in Asia. Drinking water is supplied to Chitradurga from Shanti Sagara, Chitradurga city receives 30 million liters of water per day from Shanti Sagara
This lake is 25 km from Channagiri, 40 km from Davangere city and about 270 km from Bangalore.
Constructed in 1128, the Shanti Sagara raised bank or wall between two hills took three years to construct the huge lake. The great high bank is not long, it is about 950 feet, but it is of great width, a maximum of 120 feet (the main road connecting Channagiri and Davangere passes over this high bank), high and strong, though not quite straight. A high embankment (wall) constructed with a sluice outlet, Shanti Sagar Lake has a circumference of 30 km with a water spread of 6,550 acres. It has a total drainage basin of 81,483 acres. It irrigates 4,700 acres of land and more than 1000 villages benefit from it.
The lake has a drainage area of twenty square miles. All the drainage flows into the gorge where it is built (the main stream bearing the name Haridra, a tributary of the Tungabhadra). It has successfully withstood centuries of floods, if necessary the tank can be filled with additional water from the right bank canal of Bhadra Dam. It receives all the streams from the south and flows north as Haridra river. It has two canals called “Siddah” to the north and “Basava” to the south.
Shanti Sagara History
The name Sulekere is derived from “sule” prostitute and “kere” tank. Sulekere was renamed as Shanti Sagar, where “Shanti” was the maiden name of the princess Shantavva who built the lake. “Sagara” means ocean, the childless king Vikrama Raya adopted the son of Gauda of Billahalli. This young man got the name Ragi Raya. But a daughter was born to the king as a reward for his devotion to Shiva. She was called Shantava. A king’s daughter, having developed a connection with some divinity, as an act of penance, built a lake into which the city belonging to Swargavati was submerged, submerging the town of her father, who had cursed her as a prostitute. Hence it got the name “Sulekere”.
