ABOUT

Kudumiyamalai is located about 20 km from Puddukkotai town. The village is centered around a small hillock, where a cave temple has been carved on its foot. This cave temple, locally known as Melaikkovil, has been extended continuously during later times which suggests that this place held quite an importance in the past. We found many inscriptions in and around this temple which go till the advent of British which suggests that this region would have enjoyed the continuous patronage from various dynasties which ruled over this region. However once bustling with social and cultural activities, at present this is a small idle village. This temple consists a garbha-griha (sanctum sanctorum), ardha-mandapa, maha-mandapa, sabha-mandapa, anivetti-kal-mandapa and ayirakkal mandapa. The original sanctum and ardha-mandapa would have been built during tenth century during the Chola reign, however the current sanctum and ardha-mandapa are recent structure, even later than of other four mandapas. When you enter into the temple, you first pass through ayirakkal mandpa (thousand pillars mandapa) supported on 645 pillars. The pillars have sculptures of Vishnu incarnations and various scenes and figures from epic Ramayana. From the style and architecture, this would have been executed during Vijayanagara period. We also see similar thousand pillar mandapa at other locations, which were also executed during Vijayanagara period.