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BANGALORE, INDIA, September 21, 2005: The ruins of an ancient temple built by a long-vanished kingdom in southern India are being excavated by archaeologists who said Wednesday the Hindu sanctum may have been destroyed centuries ago by a tsunami. The temple was found in the region affected by the Dec. 26 Asian tsunami, and the “discovery now poses very interesting questions about the history of tsunamis,” said the archaeologist leading the excavation, Thyagarajan Satyamurty. The temple appears to have been built between the second century bce and the first century ce. It was excavated this month just north of Mahabalipuram, a port town 30 miles south of Madras. “This is the earliest temple discovered in this region so far,” Satyamurthy said. The archaeologists are trying to determine the date of the tsunami that may have destroyed the temple from sand and seashells found at the brick structure, dedicated to Lord Muruga, Satyamurthy told The Associated Press. Geophysicists at a government laboratory in southern Trivandrum city called the sand and shells “palaeo-tsunami” deposits, he said. The temple was found one layer below a granite temple excavated by the same team in July, leading archaeologists to theorize that the Pallava kings, who ruled the region between 580 ce and 728 ce, built the latter temple atop the remains of the older one. The ruins of the temple north of Mahabalipuram that Satyamurthy discussed Wednesday were not uncovered by the recent tsunami, and excavation did not begin until after the waves struck. But the finding of that temple and the structures uncovered by last year’s tsunami has revived a debate over whether references in ancient literature to cities and towns being submerged by violent waves referred to a tsunami.

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