Place · Pancharama Shiva temple · India
Amarārāma, Amarāvatī
Also known as Amaravati, Amareshwara, Amareshwara — Amaravati, Guntur, Amararama, Amaralingeswara, Amareswara Swamy Temple, Amaravathi, Amaravati Shiva temple, Amarārāma, Amarāvatī
The first of the five Pancharama Kṣetras, on the south bank of the Krishna at Amarāvatī in Guntur district. Its white Amareśvara liṅga stands nearly five metres tall through two storeys, and the temple sits a few hundred metres from the Sātavāhana Mahāchaitya, Buddhist and Śaiva Amarāvatī side by side.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Pancharama tradition; Skanda Purāṇa
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.579, 80.357
Connections (4)
- Site adjacencyAmarāvatī Mahāstūpa
Amarāvatī holds two monuments a few hundred metres apart and about a thousand years apart: the Sātavāhana Buddhist mahāchaitya, whose carved railings went to Madras and London in the nineteenth century, and the Amareśvara temple still in worship. The stupa is the ruin and the Śiva temple the living site.
- Companion in the same setBhīmeśvara, Drākshārāmam
Amarāvatī and Drākshārāmam are the two ends of the Pancharāma geography, one on the Krishna and one on the Godāvari, about a hundred and forty kilometres apart. Tradition names Indra as the installer at one and Sūrya at the other, so the set spans both deltas and two of the great Vedic gods.
- Monument relocationNāgārjunakonda
Nagarjunakonda was moved uphill onto an island before the reservoir filled; Amaravati's sculpture was carried off in the nineteenth century to Madras and London. The Krishna valley holds the two opposite fates of Indian Buddhist archaeology — a site relocated to save it and a site dispersed to study it — within sixty kilometres of each other.
- Site withinAmarāvati / Dharanikota / Dhānyakatakam
Amaravati is home to Amaralingeswara Temple, or Amarama, one of the five Pancharama Shiva temples of Andhra Pradesh. The name Amaravati derives from the ancient sacred landscape around the temple, which stands on the southern bank of the Krishna.
On these journeys
Sources
Pancharama Kshetras — corrected from the Buddhist Mahastupa
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