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YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
south bank of the Krshņā opposite to Bezwada. The temple consists of a ground floor and three upper storeys hewn out of the natural rock. It has a frontage of about 90 feet in length and rises to a height of 50 feet from the ground level.' The ground floor and especially the third or top storey are unfinished. The temple may be said in fact to be four-storeyed, but its different storeys are supposed to represent 'three temples of the Mahendra period excavated one above the other in the same rock. The principal image in the temple is a huge decayed image of Vişņu lying on the serpent Ananta found in the second storey. A similar figure exists in the shrine attached to the big Siva temple at Mahabalipuram known as the Shore temple, and it also occurs in a large bas-relief panel in a Siva temple close to the Lighthouse at the same place. The colossal image of Anantasayana and certain Vaisnava sculptures have led to the belief that the rock-cut temple at Undavalli was originally dedicated to Vişņu. But, as we have seen, it is not rare to find an image of Vişnu, particularly in the form of Anantasayana, located in a Siva temple. The style of the doorkeepers, panels and niches containing Saiva figures, and the group of rockcut miniature Siva temples containing lingas on the hill close by all indicate that Undavalli was a stronghold of the linga cult in the seventh century in spite of the presence of Vaişnava figures in the big temple. The origin of the temples at Undavalli and Bezwada is obscure; and there is no actual proof that they are the works of the Pallavas, but their architectural style seems to denote that they were excavated by the latter and that they represent their earliest attempts in this direction before the Pallavas were driven south by the Chālukyas and executed similar but better works in the Tamil Country."
There is an ancient Pallava cave-temple known as the Orukal Mandapa on the east side of the Vedagirīśvara hill bordering the town of Tirukkalukkunram not far from Chingleput. The temple was dedicated to Siva as the shrine contains a large cylindrical granite linga. The style of its architecture clearly denotes that it was excavated in the reign of Mahendra. The Vedagirīśvara temple on the summit of the hill is likewise an ancient structure, but later than the Orukal Mandapa. Carved on the back wall of the main shrine of this temple is the Somaskanda panel representing Siva and Pārvati in the centre with the child Skanda seated between them. It may be noted that the Somaskanda panel is not found in any
1 Longhurst: Pallava Architecture, Part I, pp. 5, 22, 27, 29. Jouveau-Dubreuil
first pointed out that the Undavalli caves closely resemble those of Mahendravarman, but he thought that they were the work of the Vişņuku ding who seem to have reigned on the banks of the Godavari and the Krisbņā towards the end of the sixth century A. D., before that country was conquered by the Chalukyas. Further, as the caves of Trichinopoly and Pallăvaram contain certain surnames of Mahendra varman, which are all of Telugu origin, Jouveau-Dubreuil supposed thut Mahendravarman I reigned over the Telugu country and imported into the Tamil country the art that existed on the banks of the Krishņā. The Pallavas, pp. 32, 33. Longhurst assumes, on purely architectural grounds, that the Bezwada and Undavalli cavetemples are Pallava monuments of the early part of the seventh century,
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