Largest Budhist Center as Per Travancore Incription (Vatteyuthu). Chinese traveller, dropped by in 640 AD. Trikunnapuzha temple is a famous Budha Temple along with Sabarimala
This was a flourishing Buddhist centre of ancient Kerala
Throughout the coastal belt of Kerala, especially in mid and south Kerala Buddhist sites and relics are widely visible even today. Most of the present Hindu Savarna temples were Buddhist centres of worship and other missionary activities, including Kodungalloor, Mavelikkara, Harippad, Kiliroor, Neelamperoor, Thrikkunnappuzha etc. A granite Buddha statue can be seen in the small pagoda structure in Mavelikkara town. The junction itself is called Buddha junction. Karimadikkuttan of Harippad is actually a partly abolished Buddha idol. Buddhist influcence is deeply imprinted in every aspect of South Indian culture including language and culture. Thinkers and social revolutionaries like Sahodaran Ayyappan, Narayana Guru, Asan, C V Kunjiraman, P K Balakrishnan and others have pointed out the Buddhist legacy of the Avarnas and Dalit Bahujans in Kerala. Sankara and followers were instrumental in the persecution and annihilation of Buddhism in Kerala as elsewhere in India in the ninth and tenth centuries. Hindu Brahmanic internal imperialism engulfed the whole peninsula by the twelfth century pushing down Buddhism and Jainism to certain marginal pockets in the subcontinent, even down south to Srilanka and further east to Myanmar and the far east. For details see Gail Omvedt, 'Buddhism in India,'
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