The Tamil Nadu government has declared the early Pandya-era rock-cut cave temple at Paraikulam in Tiruchuzhi taluk in Virudhunagar district a protected monument.
K. Manivasan, Principal Secretary, Tourism, Culture and Religious Endowments Department, who issued the order, said it was one of the 10 early Pandya Kudvarai temples (cave temples).
Earlier, while making an announcement in the Assembly, Minister for Archaeology Thangam Thennarasu said these temples would be declared protected monuments. The other temples are in Pathinalamperi in Tirunelveli district, Mahipalanpatti in Sivaganga, Kurathiarai in Kanniyakumari and Sivagiri, Pudhupatti, Sewilpatti, Muvarivenron, Tirutangal and Anaiyur in Virudhunagar.
Mr. Thennarasu said the temple at Paraikulam was an Ekathala Kudavarai temple (a single cave temple). Cave temples were created during the Pallava period. The style was followed by the Pandyas. The Pandya-era cave temples belong to the 8th Century.
In his book, Cave-temples in the regions of the Pandya, Muttaraiya, Atiyaman and Ay dynasties in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, A. Dayalan, former director, Archaeological Survey of India, has said, “The rock-cut cave-temples in the regions of the Pandyas and the minor dynasties are the largest corpus of the early architectural creations in rock. Further, they are more widely distributed in lower Tamil Nadu than the Pallava ones which are spread out in a limited pocket.”
According to him, the early rock-cut art of lower Tamil Nadu and Kerala, in which the Pandyas had loomed large, provided a cultural equipoise to the Pallava counterpart in upper Tamil Nadu.
As part of its measure to protect the monument, the government would fence the area and the declaration would also prevent mining of rocks in a 300-metre radius of the monument.
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