Narasimhaswamy Temple

The Narasimhaswamy Temple is a rock-cut shrine excavated into the Namagiri hill at Namakkal, near Sendamangalam in the Tamil country, and is dedicated to Narasimha, the man-lion avatar of Vishnu. Legend tells how Hanuman entrusted a shaligrama stone to Lakshmi in disguise; when she set it down it grew into this hill, and Narasimha came to dwell in the image.

Historians date the cave to the sixth to eighth centuries and the Adiyaman kings; one inscription names a king Gunasila around the year 500. In 1500 the Kannada Haridasa Purandarasa, called the grandfather of Carnatic music, visited and sang a hymn to Namagiri Narasimha.

A fort was later raised over the same rock, passing through the hands of the Madurai Nayaks, the Sultans of Bijapur and Golconda, the kings of Mysore and finally the British in 1768.