Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/381

CHAP. III. MAMALLAPURAM. 333 5iva, Brahma, and Vishnu in various characters as Arddhanari Narasimha, Varaha, etc. none of them with more than four arms. 1 Over these figures are seven- ^ .... teen short epigraphs containing epithets that were long misunder- stood ; but from a comparison of them with the very similar series round the inside of the enclosure of the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram, a clue is obtained that enables us to fix the date of these monuments. Stated briefly, it stands thus : On the east side of the third storey of this rath is the epigraph " The temple of the holy Atyantakama - Pallave^vara : ;T , l8 9- lan ? f Dharmaraja Rath. -n j i-u- At 4.1* (From a Drawing by Mr. R.F.Chisholm.) Ranajaya, and this Atyantakama, Scale 20 ft. to i in. in the other storeys is styled Nara- simha Srinidhi, Sribhara, etc. On the monolithic temple of Gan&ra, to be noticed below, and in the Dharmaraja Mantapa cave are identical inscriptions of the same Atyantakama->Srinidhi- Sribhara ; and at .Saluvankuppam cave is an inscription of King Atiranachanda with the names of Atyantakama, Sribhara, Ranajaya, Kalakala, etc. which are also epithets of Rajasimha in the Kanchi inscriptions. Now we learn from copperplate grants that the Pallava king, Rajasimha, bore the names of Kalakala, Narasimhavishnu and Narasimhavarman, and must have reigned about the last quarter of the 7th century. We can hardly escape the conclusion, then, that Rajasimha, Atyantakama, Atiranachanda, etc., are all names (or birudas) of one king, the son and successor of Ugradanda - Lokaditya or Parame^varavarman. 2 His dedications are all 6aiva, and their occurrence on so many of the Mamallapuram shrines supports the testimony, previously founded on the style alone, that they belong to one time, and were all excavated within a short period about A.D. 670 to 7- As stated above, we have on this rath many of the gods of the Hindu Pantheon, but in forms more subdued than are to be found elsewhere. The one extravagance is that they gener- ally have four arms never more to distinguish them from mortals ; but none of those combinations or extravagances we find in the caves at Eliira, Elephanta, and elsewhere. It is the 1 ' Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. ii. plates 16, 17 ; or Carr's compilation. 2 Hultzsch, ' South Indian Inscriptions,' vol. i. pp. I -24 ; and Fleet, in ' Bombay Gazetteer,' vol i. pt. i. pp. 322-326.