Mamandur Cave Temple
Mamandur cave temple Introduction – Mamandur and Narasapalaiyam, twin villages, are famous for their four rock-cut cave temples. From the inscriptions, found in these rock-cut shrines, we find that these two villages are under royal patronage of the Pallavas in sixth-seventh century and the Cholas in eleventh century. This suggests that the villages were under continuous royal patronage. One theory is also that the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I Mamalla (CE 630-668) named the village, Narasapalaiyam, after his name. There is an irrigation tank, Chitramegha-tataka, which is assumed to be executed by the Pallava king Mahendravarman I (CE 580-630). One of the cave temples has an inscription of the Pallava king Mahendravarman I, which suggests that probably all the four caves would have been excavated during his reign. This is one of the closest cave temple site from the Pallava capital at Kanchipuram, which also suggests that probably this might be one of the earliest cave temple as well. Pallavas, being ruling over Kanchi, would probably look out for such a nearby rock where they can experiment in rock cut architecture. Mamandur provided such a rock, and what we see, not a single cave temple, but four of them on the same rock. What does it suggest? Was this is workshop ground for them? Let’s see each cave temple in detail and try to find out our answers to these riddles. How to Reach – Mamandur is located on Kanchipuram-Vandavasi road, and is about 15 km from Kanchipuram. The cave temples are about 2 km inside from the main road, in the village Narasapalaiyam.
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