Pāṇḍuvaṃśins of Dakṣiṇa Kosala

At Sirpur

The Pāṇḍuvaṃśins — the name claims descent from the Pāṇḍavas — succeeded the Śarabhapurīyas in the upper Mahanadi basin and made Śrīpura, modern Sirpur, their capital. Mahāśivagupta Bālārjuna ruled for some fifty-five years in the seventh century, and most of the dynasty's surviving records belong to his reign.

Xuanzang visited the region in the seventh century and describes a country with a hundred monasteries and ten thousand monks, alongside numerous Brahmanical temples; excavation at Sirpur has recovered both, including a Buddhist monastery with a large bronze image collection.

The Lakṣmaṇa temple

The Lakṣmaṇa temple at Sirpur, built of brick in the seventh century, survives with its tower and a richly carved stone doorframe. Brick temples of this age rarely survive at all, which gives it an importance beyond its region: it shows the north Indian temple form fully worked out in a material and a place remote from the usual centres of attention.

The dynasty faded in the eighth century, and Dakṣiṇa Kosala passed to the Somavaṃśīs, who carried the region's architectural tradition into Odisha.