At Samalkota (Samarlakota) in the Godavari region of Andhra Pradesh stands the Chalukya Kumara Bhimeswara temple, the fifth of the Pancharama Kshetras. In the legend of Tarakasura, when the great Shiva linga was shattered, this fragment was installed, tradition holds, by Kumara Swamy (Kartikeya) himself — and so it is called Kumararama. The white limestone linga is some sixteen feet tall, rising through two storeys so that it is worshipped from the upper floor.
Built by the Eastern Chalukya king Chalukya Bhima in the ninth to tenth centuries and resembling the great temple at Draksharama, it is honoured today as a protected national monument. With the Goddess revered as Bala Tripura Sundari, Kumararama completes the sacred circuit of the five Aramas — the five shrines where, tradition holds, the pieces of one divine linga became five abodes of the Lord.
