Armamalai Cave

Armamalai Cave lies west of Malayampattu village, 25 km from Ambur in Tirupattur district, and is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. This natural cave was turned into a Jain temple in the 8th century AD, and Jain monks who stayed here painted murals on its roof and walls, using both fresco and tempera on thin lime and thick mud surfaces. The style is compared with Sittanavasal in Tamil Nadu and the Bagh Caves in Madhya Pradesh.

The paintings tell Jain stories and show the Ashtadikpalakas, guardians of the eight directions such as Agni, Vayu, Kubera, Indra and Varuna. There are also petroglyphs of plants and swans, Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and remains linked to Jain saints. The French scholar Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil traced the cave through the Udayendiram copper plates of the Pallava king Nandivarman II, and the rock art was documented in the late 1960s. Much of the painting has since been damaged.