Place · Pancharama Shiva temple · India
Kshīrārāma, Palakollu
Also known as Ksheeramulikeswara, Ksheerarama, Kshirarama, Palakollu, Palakol, West Godavari
The Ramalingeshwara temple at Palakollu in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh — the fifth and last of the five Pancharama Kshetras of Andhra. The temple's 125-foot white gopuram is among the tallest in coastal Andhra, built in the 14th century under Reddy dynasty patronage. The Shiva linga was consecrated according to tradition by Rama himself after his Lanka campaign — hence 'Ramalingeshwara'. The temple's three mandapas (hundred-pillar, mukha-mandapa and natya-mandapa) are decorated with scenes from the Ramayana. The 11-day Chaitra brahmotsavam each March-April draws pilgrims from across the Godavari delta. The village's name 'Palakollu' derives from the milk Rama is said to have offered to the deity.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.520, 81.730
Connections (3)
- Companion in the same setSomārāma, Bhīmavaram
Somārāma at Bhīmavaram and Kshīrārāma at Palakollu stand twenty kilometres apart in West Godāvari, the closest pair in the set. Both are named for the colour of the stone — one said to change with the lunar month, the other white as milk — so the shards are told apart by how they look.
- Companion in the same setKumārārāma, Sāmarlakota
Kshīrārāma and Kumārārāma are the shards installed by Vishnu and by Kumāra, the first and last acts in the story. Palakollu answers with a forty-five-metre gopuram and Sāmarlakota with the two-storey Chālukya sanctum: one grew outward in the sixteenth century, the other upward in the tenth. Kumārārāma's upper gallery exists only so that abhisheka can reach the head of a liṅga too tall to bathe from the floor, which is the structural problem the whole set shares.
- Companion in the same setBhīmeśvara, Drākshārāmam
Drākshārāmam and Kshīrārāma are two of the five shards, on the Godāvari and at Palakollu. One was built upward by Chālukya Bhīma I in the tenth century to reach a liṅga too tall to bathe from the floor; the other grew a nine-storey gopuram outward six centuries later. Between them they show the two ways an Andhra temple could grow: upward in Chālukya stone, or outward in Vijayanagara-era gopurams added round an older core.
On these journeys
Sources
Hindu pilgrimage sites in India — Wikipedia
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