Kurmanathaswamy Temple

The Kurmanathaswamy Temple at Srikurmam, on the Kalinga coast of Andhra Pradesh, is dedicated to Kurma, the tortoise avatar of Vishnu. It is the only known Indian temple built before the fourteenth century for that form. The sanctum houses a tortoise image and an anthropomorphic Vishnu with Lakshmi.

It originally stood as a Shiva shrine, but in 1113 the Eastern Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva converted it into a Vaishnava temple, an event recorded in its earliest inscriptions. Its walls and processional corridor were raised in a fusion of Kalinga and Dravidian styles, with later additions by King Anangabhima Deva III.

Srikurmam became a centre of Vaishnavism in medieval Kalinga and the guru-pitha of the Ganga kings of Utkala. Naraharitirtha, a disciple of Madhvacharya, made it a seat of Madhwa activity and defended it against raids from the forest-dwelling Sabaras.