Mahabalipuram. Sahadeva Nakula Rath

This Rath did not appear in our slide showing a northeast view of the Pandava (Five) Raths at Mahabalipuram. It is built on the order of an apsidal Hindu templethat is, horseshoe-shaped with a porch on one end only. In appearance, the little shrine looks much like a cliff supporting two tiny villages, one on top of the other. Again the miniature 'lookout posts' are carved into the roofline and are its chief area of decorative sculpture. The enclosure walls are unpenetrated by niches or fully three-dimensional pilasters, as the Arjan Rath had been. It is, rather, a solid walled structure confining most of its decoration to the area of the roof only. The capstone, we see, has been enlarged to a tube-like element covering the length of the roof. It is cut into by chaitya window motifs, but not as markedly as that of the Bhima Rath had been