Nagaraja Temple

Nagercoil, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu Hindu worship of Nagaraja, with Jain figures remaining in the mandapa

Served from the stored corpus. Last scan Sep 28, 2026. Next scan Oct 28, 2026.

“The city’s older name, Nagarkoyil, is explained as the temple of the nagas.”

Editorial summary of the published place-name explanation. Not an inscription.

Photograph

Earliest republishable photograph in this record.

1 of 2

Color photograph of the Nagaraja Temple at Nagercoil, taken in January 2007.

Temple from outside

A view of the temple at Nagercoil. It does not show the sanctum interior.

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7 January 2007 Infocaster, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source and license

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What changed?

Each line keeps the confidence of its source. Conflicts are not collapsed.

Later shrines are described, not dated from a drawing Published accounts say Krishna and Shiva shrines were added after the main Nagaraja shrine, and they cite 16th-century inscriptions. This record does not treat those sentences as a measured building sequence. Reported 16th century and later · Documented fact · Medium confidence

Evidence summary

Counts are records in this corpus, including gaps.

2 Republishable photographs

0 Interior photographs

0 Diagrams

1 Documents

About the temple

Nagaraja Temple stands in Nagercoil, the city whose older name Nagarkoyil is explained from this shrine. The main sanctum is dedicated to Nagaraja, the king of serpents. Secondary accounts describe a five-headed serpent image, Jain tirthankara figures on the mandapa, and later shrines for Krishna and Shiva. The age of the core is not established from an inscription transcribed in this corpus. A 16th-century gift record is reported in those accounts and is not edited here.

Primary deity: Nagaraja

Secondary accounts call the core pre-12th century and describe 16th-century inscriptions plus later Vaishnava and Shaiva shrines. Those dates are not checked against a transcribed inscription here.