Pallava Mamallapuram
Shore Temple, Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu
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.
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.
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