Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Temple

The Sri Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Temple stands on the Simhachalam hills north of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and is dedicated to Vishnu in a form uniting his boar and man-lion avatars. Legend relates that the devotee Prahlada asked the god to appear as Varaha and Narasimha together. The icon has a boar's head and lion's body, attended by Lakshmi, and is coated in sandalwood paste except at Akshaya Tritiya.

The earliest inscription dates to 1087 under the Chola king Kulottunga I. Eastern Ganga king Narasimhadeva I raised the building in the thirteenth century; his son Bhanudeva I consecrated it in 1268. The Vijayanagara ruler Krishnadevaraya set up a victory pillar during his Kalinga campaigns of 1516 to 1519.

Worship was interrupted after 1564 under the Qutb Shahi sultans until a grant of 1604 restored the rites. Simhachalam was a Vaishnavism stronghold in the eastern Deccan.