The Mahamastakabhisheka is performed once every twelve years at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka and it is the largest Digambara event. Scaffolding is erected around the seventeen-metre Bahubali monolith and 1,008 kalashas — pots — are poured over the head from a platform above: water, milk, sugarcane juice, saffron paste, sandalwood, turmeric, vermilion, and finally showers of coloured powder and flowers, so the statue is progressively coated and washed. The right to pour the first pot is auctioned and the sums are very large. The hill has 614 steps, climbed barefoot, and the ceremony draws several hundred thousand people over a fortnight. The most recent was in 2018; the previous in 2006. Inscriptions at the site record the practice back to the twelfth century. It is also where, by tradition, Bhadrabahu and the emperor Chandragupta Maurya came south during a twelve-year famine, and where Chandragupta is said to have ended his life by sallekhana — an account that ties the Digambara tradition to the Mauryan court and is treated seriously by some historians and sceptically by others.