Mamallpauram is 60km., South of Chennai. Situated on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, it was once a port of the Pallavas have created many marvellous monuments with Sculptural Panels, Caves, Monolithic Rathas and Temples.

Once a thriving port trading with many distant nations, Pallava chisels have breathed life into stone. The Pallavaa art at this place emphasies robust earthly beauty, imbibed with life. These monumental splendours and sunny beach resorts attract Tourists from all over the world.

Straddling the mouth of the Palar river, the sleepy town of Mamallapuram served the Pallava dynasty (AD 600-900) as its most important port on the Coromandel coast. It was from here that ships laden with spices and silks sailed across the Bay of Bengal to the islands of Java, Sumatra and to Cambodia.

Little wonder, then, that the Pallava kings chose this town to record their might in stone. The amazing pavilions and temples on the edge of the sea have withstood fourteen centuries to buffeting by the relentless elements, to be hailed as prototypes of Dravidian architecture.

Even today, the town resounds to the sculptor's hammer. Encouraged by the government, the local stonecutters are continuing with a craft that first flourished here fifteen hundred year ago. In fact, the government has also set up a College of Sculpture here.

The Pallavas were the first major Tamil dynasty that ruled the region that is now Tamil Nadu between the 6th and 9th centurty AD. The area was then called Tondainadu.

The greatest Pallava king was Narasimhavarman (AD 640-668), fondly known as mamalla or little wrestler, who transformed a little seaside village into a bustling port and gave it its name.

The temples of Mamallapuram, built largely during the reigns of Narasimhavarman and his successor Rajasimhavarman, showcases the movement from rock-cut architecture to structural building. The mandapas or pavilions and the rathas or shrines shaped as temple chariots are hewn from the granite rock face, while the famed Shore Temple, erected half a century later, is built from dressed stone.

What makes Mamallapuram so culturally resonant are the influences it absorbs and disseminates. All but one of the rathas from the first phase of Pallava architecture are modelled on the Buddhist viharas or monasteries and chaitya halls with several cells arranged around a courtyard. Art historian Percy Brown, in fact, traces the possible roots of the Pallavan mandapas to the similar rock-cut caves of Ajanta and Ellora. Referring to Narasimhavarman's victory in AD 642 over the Chalukyan king Pulakesin II, Brown says the Pallavan king may have brought the sculptors and artisans back to Kanchi and Mamallapuram as 'spoils of war'. When the Chalukyans regained their kingdom, these workmen returned bearing memories of their work in the south with them. The similarities between Arjuna's Penance and Cave XXIV at Ajanta are particularly striking.

Some of Mamallapuram's other indigenous motifs, like the lion pilasters, the profuse decorations and precise figure sculptures and he nascent gopuram or gateway, in turn became leitmotifs of the southern style of temple building. Mamallapuram's influence can also be seen further afield in the Khmer sculptures of Angkor Thom and Angkor Vat in Cambodia and in the bas-reliefs at the Borobudur temple in Indonesia.