sarasvatIpaTTanam
One of the most important Śaiva Siddhāntika (Maṭṭamayūra) Maṭha of Surwaya (ancient Sarasvatīpattana, Madhya Pradesh) built probably around c. 700-800 CE.
Siddhantika monarchism was not limited to Kadwaha alone; other locations also played significant role in creating and strengthening the movement aided by the maṭhas that served as strongholds of the sages. While Kadwaha grew in prominence acquiring ever-new frontiers of material space in terms of territories its branches occupied other sites both in the near or distant regions, and their ācāryas too did not lag behind either in power or in glory. Forest tracts seem to have been their major attraction and they are found securing them without let.
So, after Kadwaha, we go back to the immediate successor of Kadambaguhādhivāsī, i.e. Śankhamaṭhikādhipati, ‘the lord of Śankhamaṭhikā,’ who perhaps flourished at Surwaya (ancient Sarasvatīpattana).
The adhipati part of his assumed name has an authoritarian tone. He seems to have occupied a small monastery (maṭhikā) at a site that eventually grew into a pattana.73 An inscription in stone of vs 1341/AD 1285, of the time of Gopaladeva, a Yājvapāla ruler, refers to it as Sarasvatīpattana where Sārasvata brāhmaṇas worshipped Śiva: śrutismṛtītihāsapurāṇa- vijña yajñapradhāna-śivasannidhāna.74 Śiva, Sarasvatī and goddess Mahāruṇḍā are invoked in another inscription from Surwaya dated in vs 1350/AD 1293.75
The association of the Surwaya maṭha with Siddhānta asceticism is confirmed by life-size figures of ascetics carved on pillars of maṇḍapa in the temple built adjacent to the maṭha. Significantly, the innermost chamber of the maṭha containing a stone bed of the munindra (lord of ascetics) has a sikhara exactly at the top, a feature seen only in this maṭha among all other Siddhāntika maṭhas. This seems to be in keeping with the ambience of lordship of the adhipati of this Śankhamaṭhikā, which we so identify on the basis of graffiti in the shape of conches on stone-blocks of the matha.
No record of this matha’s contemporaneity with Śankhamaṭhikādhipati (c. AD 700) is known so far. But it seems to have been built in late eighth or early ninth century. Garde