Shore Temple and Mahabalipuram: Masterpieces of Pallava Art

The Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram is a granite temple built on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in the early eighth century by the Pallava king Narasimhavarman II. It stands at the end of a remarkable group of monuments in the Pallava port of Mamallapuram, south of modern Chennai, which together trace the move from rock-cut shrines to free-standing stone temples in southern India. The site, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a key to the history of Dravidian temple architecture.

The Pallavas and their port

The Pallava dynasty ruled much of the northern Tamil country from its capital at Kanchipuram between about the fourth and ninth centuries. At their height in the seventh and eighth centuries they were rivals of the Chalukyas of the Deccan, with whom they fought repeated wars.

Mamallapuram was their main port. Ships sailed from this coast to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, carrying trade, Hindu and Buddhist ideas and even the Pallava script, which became the ancestor of many Southeast Asian alphabets. The town takes its name from Mamalla, “great wrestler”, a title of King Narasimhavarman I (c. 630–668), whose reign saw much of the carving.

From caves to carved boulders

Pallava stone architecture began with Mahendravarman I (c. 600–630), who introduced rock-cut cave temples, called mandapas, into the Tamil region, where earlier shrines had been built of brick, wood and other perishable materials. At Mamallapuram his successors carved several such halls into the granite hill, including the Varaha and Mahishasuramardini mandapas. Their walls hold some of the finest Pallava reliefs, such as the goddess Durga battling the buffalo demon and Vishnu as the boar Varaha rescuing the earth.

The most famous relief is the huge open-air carving often called the Descent of the Ganges or Arjuna’s Penance. Spread across two great boulders, roughly 29 metres long and 13 metres high, it shows more than a hundred figures of gods, sages, humans and animals, including life-size elephants, gathered around a natural cleft where water may once have flowed. Scholars still debate whether it shows the river Ganges descending to earth or the hero Arjuna performing penance to obtain a weapon from Shiva.

The Pancha Rathas, or Five Chariots, are a group of shrines carved out of a single granite outcrop in the seventh century. Each copies a different kind of building, from a simple thatched hut to a multi-storeyed tower, so they act as stone models of the architecture of the time. They were never finished or consecrated, and their popular names, after the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata and their wife Draupadi, are later traditions.

The Shore Temple

The Shore Temple marks the next step. Instead of carving into living rock, builders under Narasimhavarman II, also called Rajasimha (c. 700–728), cut granite blocks and assembled them into a free-standing temple. It is among the earliest important structural stone temples in southern India.

The complex contains three shrines. The larger tower, about 18 metres high, faces east towards the sea so that the rising sun lights its shrine to Shiva, which holds a fluted lingam. A smaller tower faces west towards the land, also dedicated to Shiva. Between them is a low shrine containing an image of Vishnu lying on the serpent Ananta, possibly carved from bedrock that existed before the temple was built.

The towers are in the stepped pyramidal form, rising in diminishing storeys topped by a domed cap, that became the hallmark of Dravidian temple architecture. Rows of seated bull figures of Nandi, the mount of Shiva, once lined the enclosure walls, and lion figures, a Pallava emblem, appear on the pillars. Centuries of salt wind and spray have softened many of the carvings.

Working in granite

Granite is one of the hardest stones to carve, and the Pallava sculptors worked it with iron chisels and great patience. Many monuments at Mamallapuram were left unfinished, which is a gift to historians: half-cut boulders and rough surfaces show how the carvers blocked out shapes from the top down before refining the detail.

The unfinished state has also raised questions. Some scholars think work stopped when royal attention moved elsewhere or when a king died; others suggest that the site served partly as a workshop where craftsmen experimented with forms later used in full-scale temples at Kanchipuram. Royal titles carved on the monuments, some of them used by several kings, make exact dating difficult.

At the Shore Temple, inscriptions name the shrines after titles of Rajasimha, linking the building firmly to him. Its walls were once plastered and probably painted, as were many Indian temples, so it would originally have looked brighter than the weathered grey stone visitors see today. Western interest began in the late eighteenth century, when William Chambers published an account of the ruins in the journal Asiatick Researches in 1788.

Key people

• Mahendravarman I (r. c. 600–630): Pallava king who introduced rock-cut temples to the Tamil region and was himself a playwright.
• Narasimhavarman I Mamalla (r. c. 630–668): defeated the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II and captured his capital, Vatapi; much of the carving at Mamallapuram is linked to his reign.
• Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha (r. c. 700–728): builder of the Shore Temple and of the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram.

Attributions of individual monuments to particular kings are based on inscriptions, style and royal titles carved on the stone, and scholars do not always agree on them.

Legacy and the Seven Pagodas

The Pallava monuments influenced temple building across southern India and beyond. The Chalukyas copied the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram in their Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal, which in turn helped inspire the Kailasa temple at Ellora. The later Cholas expanded the Dravidian tower to enormous scale in temples such as the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur.

European sailors knew the coast as the Seven Pagodas, and local stories told that six more temples had been swallowed by the sea. Underwater surveys from 2002 found traces of submerged walls offshore. When the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 first pulled the sea back, onlookers saw rows of stones and carvings, and the waves left new sculptures exposed on the beach. Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India afterwards uncovered the remains of an earlier brick temple at nearby Saluvankuppam.

The Shore Temple itself is protected from erosion by a stone sea wall and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram since 1984.

Timeline

• c. 600–630: Mahendravarman I introduces rock-cut cave temples to the Pallava realm.
• c. 630–668: Under Narasimhavarman I Mamalla, many monuments at the port, including the Pancha Rathas, are carved.
• 642: Narasimhavarman I captures the Chalukya capital Vatapi.
• c. 700–728: The Shore Temple is built under Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha.
• 1984: The Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 2004, 26 December: The Indian Ocean tsunami exposes buried carvings and remains along the shore.

Why it matters

Mahabalipuram is a rare place where the whole early history of southern Indian stone architecture can be seen in one town, from cave halls and carved boulders to a fully built temple. The Shore Temple’s towers set the pattern for the great Dravidian temples of later centuries, and the port’s monuments recall the Pallavas’ role in carrying Indian art and writing across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia.