Living Under A Rock

STORIES OF A LOST KINGDOM LIVE ON IN GIANT OPEN-AIR RELIEFS AND CENTURIES-OLD TEMPLES IN THE SEASIDE CITY OF MAHABALIPURAM 

- Arundhati Hazra

In a single day and night of misfortune…the island of Atlantis… disappeared in the depths of the sea.” Plato first told the story of the mythical land of Atlantis over 2,000 years ago, but it has fired the imaginations of hundreds of writers and explorers over the centuries. The legend touched me too—a National Geographic documentary that I watched as a kid, about a band of explorers looking for Atlantis made me dream of being an archaeologist, and I rued the lack of any sunken cities to discover in India. It was much later that I learned that lost kingdoms waited to be uncovered not far from my own backyard, in the temple town of Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) that I occasionally visited as a child.

The city was a key seaport when the Pallava dynasty ruled much of modern Tamil Nadu between the fourth and ninth centuries A.D. It is mentioned in numerous travelogues, including that of Marco Polo, who wrote about seeing its “seven pagodas.” Historians believed that six of the pagodas or temples were consumed by the sea, leaving behind only the Shore Temple. The theory was somewhat confirmed when the deadly 2004 tsunami uncovered stone remains near the temple.