Ambasamudram in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries An Influential Religious Center of the Pāṇḍya Kingdom (Tamil Nadu)

Abstract

This paper assembles material from the ninth and tenth centuries found in Ambasamudram, a town of the Pāṇḍya kingdom in the south of the modern state of Tamil Nadu. Through the study of architectural and epigraphical material, two significant religious structures emerge. One is a temple dedicated to Śiva, where large-scale ritual activities were conducted and which was administratively controlled by the Brahmin assembly of the village as well as by a group of high- rank Brahmins attached to the temple. The king himself endowed this temple while he was in the north of the country on a military campaign at the end of the ninth century; in the tenth century an assembly of officials gathered in the same temple to carry out a royal order regarding a land donation. The analysis of the epigraphy of the second temple reveals another type of institution: the two shrines it contains, one dedicated to Śiva and one to Viṣṇu, may have been related to a religious school in the ninth and the tenth centuries. In contrast to the quiet town of today, Iḷaṅkōykkuṭi—the ancient name of Ambasamudram—was an influential religious center of the kingdom.