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On the coast about 50 kms from Tambaram is the ancient town of Mahabalipuram or Seven Pagodas. Over 1000 years ago it was known as "Kadalmallai Talasayanam" in Tamil and  "Mahamallapuram " in Sanskrit. A majority of the monuments in the town were created in the seventh century A.D. by the Pallava kings of Kanchi, and Mahabalipuram served as an important port.

The famous Shore Temple is the oldest structural building in Tamilnad, completed during the reign of Rajasimha at the beginning of the eighth century A.D. The Five Rathas are even older and are cut out of solid rock. These monoliths were created during the reign of Narasimha Pallava who called himself Mahamalla or the great wrestler, after whom the town is named. The smallest monolith called the Draupathi Ratha is in fact a temple for Kotravai or Durga. The other rathas or chariots are also ancient temples. A magnificent freestanding sculpture of an elephant, a roughly hewn shape of a bull and a stylized form of a male lion are found near the monolithic temples representing the vahanas or mounts of the various deities. The Dharmaraja Ratha contains a figure representing a king who was most probably Narasimha. The Arjuna Ratha has beautiful panels representing princes and princesses.

There are two large bas-reliefs representing the descent of the Ganges and the main panel is also referred to as Arjuna's penance. It is believed that one can count on the main panel about 150 animals (including reptiles and birds) belonging to about 16 different species. There are a number of rock-cut caves and one of them contains sculptures of King Narasimha with two queens. From the label inscription of the Pallava period it is clear that the figures referred to are Pallava kings represented in the panels of the temple but one is not quite certain as to which one of the Narasimhas is represented there. Some of the rock-cut panels in some temples had been mercilessly defaced during the religious revivalism of the 13th century. During the 15th century mandapams or porches were built in front of panels such as the Krishna Mandapam and the Adivaraha Temple.

My colleagues and I have made a detailed study of the dress and ornaments depicted on sculptures at Mahabalipuram and the study has turned out to be very useful for fixing the period of many monuments, where there are no inscriptions (Lockwood, Siromoney, Dayanandan: Mahabalipuram Studies, Madras, 1974). For instance during Narasimha's period men were shown without anklets but with huge kundalas or ear ornaments. Women also wore huge kundalas, often a different pattern on each ear. Some women wore breast-bands but there were no shoulder straps to hold them up. Three or four decades later, at the time of Rajasimha, the kundalas became much smaller and the same kind worn on both the ears. Men started displaying anklets. Breast-bands were provided with shoulder straps for the first time.

We have shown that the horns found on some door-keepers are part of a trident and do not represent buffalo's horns as had been surmised by some scholars. All the monuments including the Rathas and the main bas-relief must have been painted over. Traces of paint can be still seen today at a number of places including the Rathas.

Animals appear in Pallava art as the vahanas of deities, in natural scenes as in Krishna Mandapa and in the bas-relief, and in panels depicting certain specific themes such as Gajalakshmi where Lakshmi is shown with elephants bathing her. We also find semi-human forms such as the Kinnaras or celestial musicians who are represented above the waist in human form and below the waist as birds. In the Varaha avatar, Vishnu is represented with a boar's head and a human body. Mahishasura is represented with a buffalo-head and a human body. There are figures with a human head attached to a lion-like body. Some times Durga is represented standing on a buffalo's head which is believed to represent the head of Mahishasura.

A figure representing the Naga king is shown with a five-headed cobra above his head and the queen with a single cobra-hood and each is represented as fully human with a crowned head and body with other ornaments. In the central cleft of the main bas-relief, there is a figure with a snake's body, a crowned human head, two hands and seven-hooded cobra head hovering over the crowned head. The corresponding female figure is depicted with three cobra hoods over her crowned head. There are other mythological figures such as the vyala a lion-like creature with horns. There are other creatures represented with a lion's body and a bird's head. Garuda, the vahana of Vishnu is represented in a human-like form with a pair of wings and a beak-like nose. Geese are shown in a row on cave temples and monoliths in such a way that they might give the effect of the temples being carried in the air by the birds.

Elephants accompanied by frolicking calves are represented in a realistic manner. At Krishna Mandapa there is a famous panel where a cow is shown licking its calf in a most realistic manner, while it is being milked. Lions are represented in a conventionalized form first with a curly mane during Narasimha's time, with ribbon-like hair radiating from the face with garlands during Rajasimha's period, and with round human-like breasts side by side with the mane and other male characteristics during the period of Nandivarman who came after Rajasimha. A cat is represented as doing penance with mice (or rats) running around it. The boar is shown in hunting scenes. A goat is depicted on the main bas-relief and so is a langur. A group of Bonnet Macaques (the common monkey) can be seen near the bas-relief where one monkey is shown as looking for lice on another. Jungle fowl, geese, peacock are birds found depicted at Mahabalipuram. In Pallava sculpture one can see the crow associated with Jeyshta, the parakeet with Durga, and the owl (or owlet) depicted on kundalas. Antelopes and deer can be seen represented in Pallava sculpture. Near the Shore Temple, at the base of the Big Lion, a slightly mutilated figure of a Spotted Deer (Sus scrofa] is shown as a vahana of Durga.

Tortoises, a large lizard (which could be the Veranus) and a cobra are represented on the bas-relief. It was reported recently in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society that snakes with two heads and one tail are occasionally met with. It is quite likely that such natural occurrences of two-headed snakes were the source for legends of multi-headed cobras.

At Kanchipuram, the capital city of the Pallavas, there are temples of the period of Rajasimha and one finds the depiction of a dog associated with the Gangadhara theme-the descent of the Ganges, and horses associated with the Sun-god on his chariot. The Sacred chank is shown as an emblem of Vishnu as well as of Durga and both the right-handed and the left-handed shells are shown.

Ganapati is represented with an elephant head as one of the dwarf-attendants during the time of Narasimha but is found in a side shrine meant for worship during Rajasimha's period. Worship of Ganapati must have become popular at Mahabalipuram at the end of the seventh century A.D. Representations of Rama are not found at Mahabalipuram but Krishna figures are. Krishna is shown subjugating the multiheaded snake Kayla.

One can see clearly the kind of animals the sculptors were familiar with at the time of the Pallavas by observing closely the manner in which they had represented them on stone at Mahabalipuram.