hey guys today i'm gonna show you some rock temples
ancient rock temples in mahabalipuram you have
never ever seen them before even if you visited mahabalipuram before
nobody has shown them to you they are never
seen by tourists the tour guides they don't even know
these exist even on youtube all travel channels want to show you
only large beautiful monuments like this
i'm also guilty of doing this but today it's going to be different okay you
see those rocks on the beach we're going to go
and see if that could be an ancient temple
this was not shot today guys it was shot many months ago before the lockdown
so you see nobody visits these places at all you do not read
about them even in archaeological papers why
because they're just considered as rocks not carvings but they're hiding
a big secret okay look at this one this is very close to
the water is this natural or is it carved
do you see any tool marks how about now from a different angle
do you see anything strange do you see any type of carving at all what is this
it's just weird is that a hand or something
is it a buffalo's head the water has smoothened
all the carvings making it look very strange
this is the giant buffalo headed demon called mahishasura with his right hand
near his mouth and his left hand raised a little above
his head now you realize this is not just a
natural rock and these are artificial carvings the buffalo is
shown with his tongue sticking out you can even see his bracelet if you
observe carefully there is a square chamber at
the center of this rock inside quite possibly a female deity
called mahisha suramardani meaning the goddess who killed
the buffalo like demon the square chambers
flanked by two lions guarding the doorway
lions are always carved next to this deity
and inside the square chamber you can see
traces of turmeric and bright red vermillion this means that there are
some locals who still come here and worship this deity on
a regular basis they do rituals with turmeric and vermilion and pray to this
deity this is very very interesting because
half the time of the year this temple is inaccessible because
of the ocean waters i know today you think i'm
exaggerating this because the temple is easy to access and the water is
a little bit far away but i have visited this place
many times and half the time the ocean comes in and it's very
difficult to access this temple so i'm lucky that
i was able to film this and it's only because nature allowed me
to film this and in this situation you know the
lockdown situation because of covet 19 pandemic
we perfectly understand how powerful nature is in fact i want to show you
two more temples like this which are only
a few hundred feet away from here where are they yes those two rocks
in the water locals say that yes those two
rocks in the water are also temples just like the one we saw except
water never recedes it does not go back to that point
i hope someday i get to show you those two temples as well
i want to see it and i'm sure that you would also
want to see these ancient temples but for the time being it's just taken
over by nature this is the real power of nature i mean think about
it even if archaeology department wants to
protect these temples what can they do and they try to save
the bigger monuments the shore temple was
originally taken over by tides all the time and they had to put an
enormous amount of rocks around the temple
to save the shore temple from the ocean so we know there are sunken temples in
mahabalipuram but sadly we cannot protect them
now what is the purpose of this nice little temple when i ask a question
like this you may just be puzzled what is the purpose of
any temple right or a church or a mosque
what is the purpose of that they were all just created so people
could worship and pray to these gods right not this one
this was built for a different purpose i know
i told you the name of the goddess inside and i
even pointed out that locals worship her but see this is hiding a nice
little secret nobody knows about it i also did not understand this until i
explored the beach more mahabalipuram is full of mysteries but
many of them go unseen even though they are right in
front of you see those rocks on the beach what are
they doing in the middle of the beach there more
ancient temples these are the temples that reveal
the actual purpose of these structures let's go closer and see what we can find
remember we saw buffalo in the previous monument
here we can see more animals an elephant carved at the bottom you can see it's
trunk and the tusks there's a circle carved on top and
there's a square chamber cut inside the circle how old are these
carvings they're about 1300 years old
these are very ancient and i'm giving you the
mainstream archaeological account this number is 1300 years old
and these carvings could even be much much
older than that near the elephant you can also see a horse a galloping
or running horse there's something carved
inside that chamber but this figure is beyond recognition
standard archaeology may explain that inside
there was a carving of lord indra because the elephant is considered the
mount of indra but it could also be other deities like
gajalakshmi as well and then there is a human or humanoid figure carved as well
look at his legs this is possibly a dancing posture 1
300 years ago this would have been a brilliant carving
but the water keeps coming in and then there's the
salty sea breeze they both destroy everything let's look at the other side
of the shrine initially you tend to think
these are natural ridges just lumps caused by erosion and water
no all these are carvings if you look closely there are multiple
figures carved all over the rock it must have
meant something we see a square chamber with a deity carved
inside and on the top there is a lion-like
figure inside you can see a deity holding a
weapon or a tool the lion signifies goddess Mahishasuramardani
or durga so possibly inside this chamber
this deity was carved okay and this is strange
a free-standing rock has been turned into a lion a giant face
and a long body of course everything is beaten by
weather nearby another very outlandish monument it's shaped
into a very weird thing what are these things can you recognize what
these are these are strange animal heads carved on
the top and the sides and in the middle there's
a square chamber how am i able to immediately recognize that these are all
animal heads carved around the chamber because
i have seen a large temple called tiger caves i've also shown you
this temple in a previous video that tiger caves is just half a mile
away from this small scale model you see the
similarity yes there should be no doubt that this
little rock was a small scale model and tiger caves
was the finished temple again look the horse
the elephant sculpted in small scale here but carved
much bigger in the finished large scale temple
now look at the similarity i'm just showing you the small scale models
and the bigger temples all of them are in mahabalipuram i've shown you
many times that ancient indian builders worked methodically they created small
scale models before carving giant megalithic structures
this is exactly why we see these small temples all over the beach
they're all models i've just shown you a few but this is mahabalipuram one of
the greatest ancient cities in india you will find
incredible structures everywhere i hope you like this video i'm praveen
mohan thanks a lot for watching don't forget to subscribe and also click
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i will talk to you soon bye