Sreemoolavasam Vihara of Kerala, Submerged or Taken by the Sea?
Sreemoolavasam Vihara was a major Buddhist monastery in Kerala. We’re not talking about a small shrine here, this was a full-fledged monastic centre, a place where monks lived, studied, and functioned as part of wider trade and cultural networks. The frustrating part is, we know it existed and we know it was important, but we still don’t know exactly where it was. That’s what makes it one of the more interesting unsolved historical and archaeological mysteries in Kerala and India.
We have solid proof that it existed. The Paliyam Copper Plates, issued by Vikramaditya Varaguna of the Ay dynasty, mention Sreemoolavasam Vihara as an already established and important institution in the 9th century. So this wasn’t some minor local setup.
Then there’s the Mushika Vamsa Kavya, which talks about the same place from up north. It mentions a ruler protecting it from the sea and another visiting it. That doesn’t mean the Mushikas controlled it, it just shows the place was well known. The important bit here is the sea, which strongly suggests the vihara was on the coast and dealing with erosion.
Now look at what survives in central Kerala, especially the Onattukara side. You’ve got the broken but well-known Karumadi Kuttan, and more intact finds like the Buddha Statue from Kandiyoor, Mavelikara. Then there are places like Budhanoor, where even the name and local memory point back to Buddhists. These aren’t random one-off finds, they line up into a clear regional pattern.
Another thing to keep in mind is how these remains actually survive. They weren’t neatly preserved. Some images were broken, thrown into ponds or lakes, and only found again later. By that point, they had already lost their original context and got pulled into local religious practices differently.
And this isn’t unique to Kerala. In other parts of India too, older Buddhist sites were taken over, reinterpreted, and given new identities. So when something “disappears”, it doesn’t always mean it’s gone, it often means it’s been changed beyond easy recognition.
Put all of this together, inscriptions, literary references, and what we actually see on the ground, and a picture starts to form. Sreemoolavasam was very likely a major coastal Buddhist centre, and the Onattukara region looks like the inland zone connected to it.
That’s why the Ambalappuzha to Haripad coast becomes interesting. This stretch has seen major shoreline changes over time. If the vihara was somewhere along this coast, there’s a real chance that it’s either underwater now, buried, or sitting there in a completely altered form.
So maybe the problem isn’t that Sreemoolavasam is “lost” in the usual sense. It might be that we’re already looking at its remains, just in pieces, out of context, and partly erased by time and the sea.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srimulavasa_Vihara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushika_dynasty
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Indian_Antiquary_Vol_1.pdf/181
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paliyam_copper_plates
https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.2175
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_Kerala