The Kailasanathar Temple in Kanchipuram Was Built by the Pallava King Rajasimha Around 700 CE, and Twelve Sanskrit Verses Cut in Granite Round Its Sanctum Name Him as the Founder

The Kailasanathar temple in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, was built by the Pallava king Rajasimha around 700 CE, and the temple says so itself. A Sanskrit inscription of twelve verses runs round the outside of the central shrine, cut into granite slabs, and it names Rajasimha as the builder of a Shiva temple that he called Rajasimha-Pallavesvara, after himself.

That is the account in the first volume of South Indian Inscriptions, where the German scholar Hultzsch edited the stones. He reported the granite inscription in excellent preservation. The first verse and the start of the second lie under the floor and under the wall of a later hall, so his assistant had some slabs lifted for a time to copy most of the first verse.

A founder’s name in granite

The verses open with a blessing to the river Ganga and then give the Pallava family a pedigree that begins with Brahma and runs through the sage Angiras, Brihaspati, Samyu, Bharadvaja, Drona and Drona’s son Asvatthama to Pallava, the founder of the line. Hultzsch translates the next step as the birth of the supreme lord Ugradanda, “the destroyer of the city of Ranarasika.” His son was Rajasimha, who bore the titles Atyantakama, Sribhara and Ranajaya.

A second inscription, of four verses, runs round the smaller shrine that stands in front of the main one and is now called Naradesvara. It says Mahendra, son of Rajasimha and grandson of Lokaditya, built a Shiva temple named after himself next to his father’s. Hultzsch took Lokaditya to be the same man as Ugradanda, and he notes that the name Mahendravarmesvara is cut three times on that building.

Other inscriptions in the same early lettering sit in niches to the right of the front entrance. Hultzsch notes that these niches, now joined by brick walls, were first meant as separate small shrines. One, the third, records that Rangapataka, wife of a king called Narasimhavishnu or Kalakala, founded a Shiva shrine there. The Tamil Nadu Temples Project calls her Rajasimha’s queen, and the Swarajya writer R. Gopu credits a queen of that name with the row of small shrines.

Where the dates differ

Hultzsch tried to date the founders by matching the Pallava kings against Chalukya records, and he proposed, if his arrangement held, that the foundation fell before 567 CE, “say about 550.” Later sources place it roughly 150 years after that.

The Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India page says the temple was built around 700 CE by Narasimhavarman II, also called Rajasimha, with additions by his son Mahendravarman III. The Archaeological Survey of India’s page on Mahabalipuram dates Rajasimha to AD 700 to 28. An IANS report of May 2021 gives 685 to 705, and the Tamil Nadu Temples Project gives 695 to 720. The World History Encyclopedia gives 700 to 728 as Rajasimha’s reign. The publisher’s description of Padma Kaimal’s 2020 book on the temple says only that it is an eighth-century complex.

Whichever range is right, the Survey ties the king to a building style. Its Mahabalipuram page says structural architecture, meaning temples built up from cut stone rather than carved out of rock, was introduced on a large scale under Rajasimha, culminating in the Shore Temple, whose three shrines include a small one named Rajasimhesvara. The rock-cut and shoreline side of the Pallava story is in the Pallava port of Mahabalipuram.

58 niche shrines, nine sub-shrines and a sixteen-sided linga

On the Incredible India page, the compound has a vimana (the tower over the sanctum) with carved tiers, halls with carved pillars, and 58 small Shiva shrines set into niches in the inner wall. The World History Encyclopedia also counts 58 niche shrines, with figures of Shiva, Parvati and Skanda, and says the sandstone building stands inside a decorated wall. The Tamil Nadu Temples Project agrees on 58 in total.

Counts vary with what is included. eSamskriti lists 55 small shrines along the inner wall, eight small shrines in front of the complex and nine sub-shrines attached to the main shrine, seven of them visible from outside. Gopu likewise lists nine, the largest holding sculptures about nine feet tall.

According to the Incredible India page on Kanchipuram, the sanctum holds a sixteen-sided black granite linga. Gopu describes a passage round the sanctum for circumambulation and says it is the first of its kind in a Tamil temple of this style. eSamskriti describes a tower of four storeys, square in body with an octagonal crown.

Shiva appears in many forms on the walls. Gopu names Nataraja dancing, Shiva as the wandering beggar Bhikshatana, Gangadhara receiving the river and Tripurantaka, and he describes five large narrative panels on the sanctum wall. His list also has rampant lions on the pillars and yalis, mythical lion-like beasts, on the enclosure wall.

Padma Kaimal’s book reads the layout as a route. Her publisher’s description says that walking the complex clockwise focuses the mind on worldly engagement, and counterclockwise on renunciation, and that figures facing north sit in shadow while those facing south sit in sunlight.

Four tiers of royal titles

Inside the enclosure, Hultzsch found the king’s titles, which he called birudas, in four tiers. In his reading the third tier is the original, written in the same early alphabet as the foundation inscription and so of Rajasimha’s own time. The first and second tiers are later copies by his descendants, and the fourth, in an ornamental alphabet, runs only as far as the twentieth niche.

How many titles there are depends on who counts. Hultzsch says several hundred. Gopu gives 244, a 2016 DT Next article says over 240, eSamskriti says about 250, and the Tamil Nadu Temples Project says close to 300. Gopu names a few: Atyantakaama, “a man of infinite desires,” Kalaasamudra, “ocean of arts,” and VeenaNarada, meaning Narada with his veena. eSamskriti reads the titles as describing a king devoted to the Agamas (the texts on temple worship), fond of the epics and committed to the Shaiva path.

The Chalukya conqueror who returned the property

A Kannada inscription in the Kailasanatha temple, which Hultzsch edited for the journal Epigraphia Indica, belongs to a Chalukya king named Vikramaditya and is undated. The Wokkaleri plates say that Vikramaditya II made gifts to the Rajasimhesvara temple after taking Kanchi, and on that ground Hultzsch assigned the record to him with great probability. According to the text, the conqueror did not confiscate the temple’s property but gave it back to the god. The University of Wurzburg’s Indoskript catalogue lists it as Old Kannada and partly damaged, marks the ruler as Vikramaditya II with a question mark, and gives 740 to 770 for the date.

On Pattadakal in Karnataka, the Archaeological Survey of India’s page carries the story onward. It credits the Virupaksha temple to a queen of Vikramaditya II (733 to 46) and says it was built under the influence of the Kailasanatha at Kanchipuram. The Mallikarjuna temple there, the page says, celebrates the king’s victory over the Pallavas, and Virupaksha later served as a model for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (757 to 783) when he carved the Kailasa at Ellora. Both sites are covered in Pattadakal and the Kailasa temple at Ellora.

Chola gifts, and the Thanjavur claim

The temple stayed in use for centuries after the Pallavas. Hultzsch’s second and third parts print Tamil gift records that call it the holy stone-temple, in Tamil Tirukkarrali. One pillar record, dated in the fifteenth year of a king styled Madirai-konda Ko-Parakesarivarman (a style Hultzsch notes the Chola king Parantaka I also bore), records a gift of 270 sheep so that their ghee could keep three lamps burning. In a king’s third year, villagers of Menalur took gold from the temple and pledged oil for a lamp from the interest. A fragment dated in a twelfth year mentions “the large holy stone-temple, alias Rajasimhesvara,” and Hultzsch identified its king as Rajaraja-deva. Another fragment, of Rajendra Chola, appears to record gifts of paddy, gold and money.

Popular accounts go further. Gopu says Rajaraja Chola called it Kanchipurattu Periya Tiru-k-karrali, the great stone temple of Kanchipuram, and credits it as an inspiration for his Thanjavur temple. The IANS report attributes that inspiration to the studies of a local temple researcher named Mylvahanan, and eSamskriti makes the same claim. The Hultzsch inscriptions cited here do not say it, so it remains a tradition and an art-historical reading. The Thanjavur builder and his temple are covered in Rajaraja Chola, Emperor of the Seas and in the Great Living Chola Temples.

Visiting, and keeping the paint alive

Incredible India lists the temple as open from 9 AM to 12:30 PM and from 4 PM to 6:30 PM, and gives no entry fee. I checked that page on 29 October 2026. Other listings differ: the Tamil Nadu Temples Project gives 8:30 to 12 and 4 to 9, and the DT Next writer reported in 2016 that the sanctum closed from noon to 4 PM while the rest stayed open to visitors who came for the architecture. Confirm the hours locally.

The nearest airport is Chennai International (MAA) and the nearest railway station is Kanchipuram (CJ), per the same site, which names Maha Shivaratri in February or March as the main festival. It also calls the temple one of the oldest structures in Kanchipuram dedicated to Shiva and says it holds some of the earliest and best Hindu mural art in Tamil Nadu. Gopu describes two damaged Somaskanda paintings between the small shrines, which he places in the Ajanta tradition.

The paint is the part that needs care. In May 2021 an IANS report said the Archaeological Survey of India planned to bring in experts from IIT Madras after a detailed survey found the murals fading and chemical treatment failing to stop the decay. An ASI official told the agency traditional methods would be used because the temple is lime-plastered. I found no later report on the work as of 29 October 2026.

India’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage, as published by the Press Information Bureau, includes “Temples of Kanchipuram” in Tamil Nadu, submitted in 2021 under criteria (iv) and (vi). The IANS report says the Kailasanathar temple is on that list.