Memorandum seeking protection of ancient pallava scultures at Mamallapuram

Damaging ancient statues at Mamallapuram has become a continuing offence. This should be stopped and they should be protected is the demand by social activists.

Mamallapuram sculptures are world famous. The shore temple, five raths, arjun tapas, krushna mandap, varaha mandap, cave temples are some of the 32 ancient sculptures here. This is under archeological department care. As proper care was not taken for the past few years damages to these sculptures is continuing by anti-social elements. Just last year 3 statues were desecrated by miscreants.

Recently some miscreants damaged the nose and fingers of Bhooma devi in the varaha mandap. This was noticed by the guide who went to explain to some foreign tourists. They were shocked and conveyed this to the archeological dept officials. The officials are enquiring about this. Such incidents has sent a shock wave amongst the social activists.

TN govt recognized sculptor Shri. V Haridas told that in 7th century pallavas ruled the place with mamallapuram as their port and kanchipuram as their capital. Pallava kings mahendravarman and his son narasimhavarman, have made these cave temples depicting the harmony between saivism and vaishnavism through sculptures. It is the bounden duty of everyone to protect these. It is very painful that such invaluable sculptures are getting indiscriminately damaged. It is very difficult to recreate such sculptures. The archeological dept should take adequate care that at least in future such harmful incidents don’t happen.

Source : Translated from report at Dinamani