Mahabalipuram: The land of rock art and history

Mahabalipuram was our next stop. Mahabalipuram is an ancient historic town and a famous seaport in the 1st century CE. An 8th-century Tamil text written by Thirumangai Alvar, one of the 12 Alvar saints of south India described this place as Sea Mountain ‘where the ships rode at anchor bent to the point of breaking laden as they were with wealth, big trunked elephants and gems of nine varieties in heaps’. It is also known by several other names such as Mamallapattana and Mamallapuram.

We visited this place to see the famous Group of Monuments, which are a collection of the 7th and 8th century CE religious monuments carved out of stones. It was one of the most beautiful stone carved arts we have seen so far. It is an UNESCO world heritage site since 1984. The site has 40 ancient monuments and Hindu temples, including one of the largest open-air rock reliefs in the world, the Descent of the Ganges or Arjuna's Penance. These monuments were built during the Pallava Dynasty which ruled south India between 275 CE and 897 CE.

The monuments in this region are broadly divided into five categories:

Rathas: Chariot-shaped temples
Mandapas: Cave temples
Rock reliefs
Structural temples
Excavations

The architecture of the rock-cut temples, particularly the rathas, became a model for south Indian temples. Architectural features, particularly the sculptures, were widely adopted in South Indian, Cambodian, Annamese and Javanese temples. Descendants of the sculptors of the shrines are artisans in contemporary Mahabalipuram.

We loved our time here, and we won't mind coming back and spending a lot more time getting lost in these beautiful rock sculptures.