VILLUPURAM: A team of archeologists on Tuesday found inscriptions dating back to the Chola period in the basement of a temple in Kappur near Villupuram.
As part of their research on historical monuments in Villupuram, professor T Ramesh of the History department in Aringar Anna Arts and Science College and his team--which included activist M Prakash---inspected the Seitharulieswarar temple in Kappur.
"We found the inscription on a basement stone on the southeast part of the temple. This inscription dates back to 1072 AD, the second year of the rule of Cholan king Kulottunga I," Ramesh told TNIE. He added that the inscription revealed, that the village and the temple had the same names back in the Chola period.
According to the inscription, three cows had been donated to the priest of the village, Nera Pranan, so that he could use the expenditure for lighting lamps in the temple. "The basement of the temple was built with stones and then, bricks were used for construction,” Ramesh added.
He further said that two Vishnu statues from the Pallava period, Vinayagar statues, and Magudeswarar (Sandikeswarar) statues from the same period have been recovered from the temple by an earlier team of archeologists. “We conclude from both sets of research that a Shiva temple used to exist here during the Pallava rule, which we assume was damaged, and the existing temple came up here during the Chola period,” Ramesh said.
Meanwhile, residents appealed to the Government to take steps to preserve the thousand-year-old temple, which they said had started decaying due to lack of maintenance.