Three branches
The Śilāhāras appear in the eighth century as Rāṣṭrakūṭa feudatories and divided into three lines: one in the north Konkan around Thane, one in the south Konkan, and one at Kolhapur in the Deccan. The northern branch was the most important, holding the coast and islands where Mumbai now stands, and its charters are the earliest documents to name several of the villages absorbed into that city.
Their claimed descent from Jīmūtavāhana — the vidyādhara prince of the Nāgānanda who offers his own body to save a serpent from Garuḍa — is another instance of an unusual and evidently local dynastic myth.
Ambarnath
The Śiva temple at Ambarnath, near Mumbai, was built in 1060 and is the finest surviving monument of the northern branch: a stellate plan and a heavily sculpted exterior in the Bhūmija manner, and one of the very few complete pre-Sultanate temples left in the Mumbai region.
The Kolhapur branch endowed the Mahālakṣmī temple at Kolhapur, which remains one of the principal goddess shrines of Maharashtra.
The Śilāhāras were destroyed in the thirteenth century by the Seunas of Devagiri, and the Konkan passed with the rest of Maharashtra into the Sultanate world shortly afterwards.
Further reading
- Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Sakta Religion. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine. University of California Press, 1986
- Kinsley, David. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. University of California Press, 1997
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.