Halekote Mukhyaprana: Hanuman as the Chief Breath

Hanuman is worshipped in thousands of places, as Rama’s servant and friend. At Halekote, in Mangaluru, he is worshipped under another name, Mukhyaprana.

The temple is small and not much has been written about it. This page first gives what can be checked, and then what is said locally.

Where it is

Wikipedia describes Bolara, or Bolar, as an inner-city locality of Mangaluru, mostly residential, where the Mangaladevi temple, from which the city takes its name, is found.¹ Its list of religious places for Bolar names the Mangaladevi temple, the Mariyamma temple, a church, the Kallurti Sthana, the Dhoomavathi temple, a dargah and a Mukhyaprana temple of Lord Hanuman.¹ The article gives the Mukhyaprana temple no date, builder or history. Our notes place it in the old Halekote quarter of Bolar. A separate shrine, the Halekote Sri Mariyamma and Mahishamardini temple, is also in Bolar, and we found nothing that links the two.¹

Our page on Mangaladevi and Sharavu tells of the great goddess temple nearby.

What “Mukhyaprana” means

The word is a name of Vayu, the wind-god. Wikipedia says that Vayu means wind or air, and that it also stands for prana, breath, the breath of life. The deity of life is sometimes called Mukhya Vayu, the chief Vayu, or Mukhya Prana, the chief of the life force.²

The article tells a story from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that explains the name. The gods who run the body’s functions once argued over which of them was greatest. Each in turn left the body, and the man lived on, though blind, or deaf, or otherwise less. When Mukhya Prana began to leave, all the others were pulled from their posts, as a strong horse pulls up the pegs it is tied to. They saw that they could work only because he empowered them.²

The article adds that the followers of Madhva, the 13th-century saint, regard him as an incarnation of Vayu, and lists Hanuman and Bhima as Vayu’s sons.² So in this tradition Hanuman is a son of the chief breath, and the saint who founded it is held to be a form of the same god. Our page on Udupi Sri Krishna Matha tells how Madhva’s followers came to look after that temple.

What is said locally

The only account of the temple’s story that we have is from social media posts, which our research notes summarise. No written source confirms any of it, and the dates in it do not agree, so please read it as what is said at the temple and not as history.³

A guardian of the city. The posts say that Mukhyaprana at Halekote is held to be Mangaluru’s own kshetrapalaka, the guardian deity of the city.³

An old installation. They say that the image was installed in the time of a saint named in the posts as “Sri Veda Vyasaraya”. Our notes read this as Vyasatirtha, the 15th and 16th century Madhva pontiff, and not the sage Vedavyasa of the Mahabharata. The posts also give a founding in the 12th century BCE, which cannot fit with the rest.³

Three pontiffs. The temple is said to have been visited and blessed by Madhvacharya, Vyasatirtha and Vadiraja Tirtha of the Sode Matha, in turn. Vadiraja is said to have worshipped here singing a verse that begins “Kusina Kandeerya Mukhya Pranana”, and the priests are said still to close each day’s worship with it. The posts date his visit to the 14th century, which does not agree with his other dates on this site, so we do not repeat it as a date.³

The sultan who waited. The best-known story is of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. He is said to have arrived and found the gates closed. He did not force them, but waited outside and asked the devotees nearby about the god within. Moved by what he heard, he is said to have paid his respects and later had a rock image of the deity set up just outside the temple, where it still stands. The posts date the visit to the 17th century, but Tipu Sultan ruled in the late 18th, so the date is wrong, whatever the story’s origin.³

Worship today. The posts mention a free community meal on Saturdays, vows for health, legal and family matters that are paid with offerings of menduvada (a fried lentil cake) and betel leaves, a butter adornment of the deity (Benne Alankara), a garland of vada (Vade Maale), and a rebuilding in 1987.³

What we could not find

A history of the temple. Wikipedia gives only the name. A web search found no page about the temple’s founding, builder, trustees or affiliation, and we found no inscription or study.
A written source for the local account. Everything in the section above comes from social media posts and their comments. The dates in them conflict, and we could not check any of it.
The rule about Udupi swamis. Our notes record a claim that incoming Udupi Paryaya swamis must visit this temple before taking the seat. It could not be confirmed, and we have left it out.

Mangaladevi and Sharavu, the goddess temple of Bolar that gave Mangaluru its name
Udupi Sri Krishna Matha: Eight Monasteries, One Child God, where Madhva’s tradition runs a temple
Dharmasthala: The House the Daivas Asked For, where Vadiraja Tirtha is said to have given the town its name

Sources & further reading

The books and articles behind the numbered notes on this page.

Wikipedia, “Bolar, Mangalore” (checked 9 October 2026): Bolar, its temples and its religious places.
Wikipedia, “Vayu” (checked 9 October 2026): the name Mukhyaprana, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad story, Madhva as Vayu’s incarnation, and Hanuman and Bhima as his sons.
Social media posts about the temple, as summarised in our research notes (two Instagram reels and their comment threads; we could not review them directly): the guardian status, the installation, the three pontiffs, the verse, the story of Tipu Sultan, the worship and the rebuilding.

The first two sources are short Wikipedia articles, and the third is not a written source. We found no source about the temple itself.