Dinesh Wagle on Nepali Society

Seshasyi Vishnu. He is known as Palligondaruliya Deva, “the God who was pleased to go to sleep” and teh temple is called Narapathi Simha Pallava Vishnu Shrine.

This image of the reclining Vishnu was lying on the sand even before the Pallavas came on the scene. It is believed that during the middle of the 7th century King Narasimha Varman built an enclosure of stone for the image on the seashore. Then around the beginning of the 8th century, King Rajasimha raised two small shrines for Shiva adjacent to this temple.

The image of Vishnu and the base of its shrine are carved out of the bedrock. While much of the Shore Temple is a masonry one, built out of quarried blocks of rock, its core structure, this shrine of Vishnu is rock hewn with no blocks at all, carved out of solid granite. Thus the Shore Temple is partially rock hewn and partially constructed out of stone blocks.