Temples in and around Madurantakam
by B. Mekala | 2016 | 71,416 words
This essay studies the Temples found around Madurantakam, a town and municipality in Kancheepuram (Kanchipuram) District in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Madurantakam is one of the sacred holy places visited by Saint Ramanuja. It is also a region blessed with many renowned temples which, even though dating to at least the 10th century, yet they c...
Imperialistic Rule
Chenkanan, a pre Vijayala Chola king, who was known to the Saiva Nayanmars and the Vaishnava Alvars, is counted as one of the Bhakti saints mentioned in ‘Tiruttondar tokai’ and the Periya Puranam.[1] He ruled after the Sangam period or early historical period, which is the Fifth and Sixth Centuries A.D., but well before the establishment of the Imperial Cholas.[2]
Tevaram suggested the number of the temples namely five hundred which is staggering for the Seventh Century A.D. Hence the temple building activity should be located in the early Chola period and not before. However, apart from the temple building activity credited to Chenkanan, the prevalence of temples built of brick and other perishable materials, earlier than the seventh century is attested especially by the Mandagapattu Inscription of Mahendravarman I[3] and the recent excavated shrine (believed to be of Lord Subramanya) on the coastal site near Saluvankuppam, and the earlier Kaverippumpattinam brick structures.
This testimony of Hieun Tsang who visited Kanchi in the Seventh Century A.D. is significant as he refers to the many Shiva temples, apart from Buddhist structures and the still numericallly strong Jains (Nigantas) which were brick ones.[4] There is a problem to confront the dating of these temples and corroborating the literacy and the epigraphic sources for example because most of the temples sung by the Alvars and Nayanmars do not contain inscriptions of a period earlier than the middle or later Chola kings.[5] The specific reference to stone temples, ‘Karrali’, erected in this period, is also somewhat curious, for it may also indicate the re-erection in stone of earlier brick temples and occasionally, an entirely new temple in stone.[6]
So the history of f temple in the Tamil country begins for all practical purposes with the rise of Pallavas in the seventh century A.D. Under the Pallavas, the architecture and sculpture in stone made great advances. It was later on continued by the Pandyas and the Cholas.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Vellaivaranan,K., Panniru Thirumurai Varalaru, Part III, Annamalai University, 1980, pp 1245-1250.
[2]:
Tiruttani and Velanjuri Copper Plates, Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, Madras, 1979, p 60.
[3]:
S.I.I., Vol.II, No. 12
[4]:
Walters, T., and Burhell, S.W., Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India A.D., 629-645, Vol.II, London, 1904, pp 226-27.
[5]:
Champakalakshmi, R., op.cit., 2011, pp.455-457.
[6]:
E.C., Vol.II, 334, pp 146-47.