{"id":21034,"date":"2024-06-30T03:34:15","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T03:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=21034"},"modified":"2024-06-30T03:34:15","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T03:34:15","slug":"mamallapuram-period-of-transition-by-benoy-k-behl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2024\/06\/30\/mamallapuram-period-of-transition-by-benoy-k-behl\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamallapuram: Period of Transition by Benoy K Behl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>MAMALLAPURAM, INDIA, May 28, 2024 (YouTube): On the shores of Tamil Nadu, on the eastern coast of peninsular India, is a marvelous town of temples, carved out of the rock. Mamallapuram was one of the greatest sea-faring ports of ancient times. Ships sailed constantly from here to Sri Lanka, South East Asia and China. Here, over perhaps a hundred years, from about 630 to 728 CE, beautiful monuments were cut out of outcrops of hard gray granite. Cliff faces were transformed into a teeming world of animals and people. Boulders were carved into fine temples and rocks were chiseled into the shapes of animals. Mamallapuram is indeed an enchanted place. <br><br>The 7th and 8th centuries at Mamallapuram are a remarkable time. The humanistic and naturalistic qualities of ancient art are continued here in the rock-cut sculpture. At the same time, we see here the beginning of structural temples. At Mamallapuram, we also see the start of royal patronage of temple-building and the earliest royal portraits.   <br> <br>Mamallapuram video with an introduction by historian Behl at source:<br><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/5yrZg1q1m8k?si=96wQgJ70mjJ96boK&amp;t=695\n\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/5yrZg1q1m8k?si=96wQgJ70mjJ96boK&amp;t=695<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MAMALLAPURAM, INDIA, May 28, 2024 (YouTube): On the shores of Tamil Nadu, on the eastern coast of peninsular India, is,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21057,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21034\/revisions\/21057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}