# Pallava Mamallapuram
**पल्लवों का मामल्लपुरम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/mamallapuram/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 630 CE – 728 CE (± 10 years)
- Where: Shore Temple, Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu (12.617, 80.199)
- Tags: art, religion, trade

## Summary

At the Pallava port east of Kanchipuram, granite is cut into cave shrines, monolithic rathas and a vast relief, and the Shore Temple rises by the sea.

कांचीपुरम के पूर्व में पल्लव बंदरगाह पर ग्रेनाइट को काटकर गुफा-मंदिर, एकाश्म रथ और विशाल शिला-उत्कीर्णन बने, और समुद्र तट पर तट मंदिर उठा।

## Account

The town takes its name from Mamalla, a title of Narasimhavarman I (c. 630-668), the Pallava king who defeated the Chalukyas and took their capital Vatapi in 642. Under him and his successors the granite outcrops by the sea were cut into cave shrines, monolithic temples called rathas, five of them in one group, and a relief carved across the face of two great boulders. Around 700 Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha built the Shore Temple in dressed stone at the water's edge.

The port linked Kanchipuram, the Pallava capital, with Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, where the Khmer, Thai and Javanese scripts descend from Pallava letter forms. Much here was left unfinished, and the great relief has long been read two ways: as Arjuna's penance or as the descent of the Ganga.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/249/
- Harle, J. C., The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (1994)

## Image

The Shore Temple Mamallapuram. Paulwalker96, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Shore_Temple_Mamallapuram.jpg

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