of many Keshava temples built in or before the 13th century in different parts of India, as well as in Belur in 1117 CE about away. The Keshava temple at Somanathapura faces east and is enclosed in a walled courtyard with a major gate (mahadvara). Outside the walls before the gate stands a tall pillar, which once had a Garuda statue on top, now missing. Inside the gate, to the left are vertical standing inscription stones. These stones have the form of the hero stones, with the top decorated with Hindu iconography as well as miniature reliefs of Keshava, Janardhana and Venugopala. The inscription is in old Kannada. The small entrance mandapa is supported by lathe-carved soapstone pillars. The temple is carved from soapstone, a green-grey chloritic schist material that is soft in quarry but hardens when exposed to air. This is not locally available and must have been imported from another part of South India. It enabled the artists to shape and carve out intricate details for the artwork. The temple has a large open public courtyard surrounded by the walled enclosure, with the main three-towered temple in the center. The courtyard wall frames a rectangular veranda and an array of small shrines. Architecture The northern and southern row of small shrines inside the pillared courtyard corridor consists of eighteen single shrine and one linked-double shrine each. The linked-double shrine is at the northwestern and southwestern corners of the courtyard. The western row consists of fourteen small shrines, while the eastern row consists of eight single small shrines and two linked-double shrines. In total, the Kesava temple consists of 58 small 1x1 small shrines, 4 small 2x1 linked-double shrines, 2 near entrance, and the main central temple. The 64 corridor shrines once featured Vedic and Puranic deities and rooms for pilgrims. The statues in the smaller shrines were defaced, their limbs broken or destroyed. Some of the recovered broken pieces are in a heap inside the temple. The collection includes Jaina statues in the Kayotsarga posture as well as numerous Hindu statues. The ceiling of the southern array of shrines has carvings on its ceiling, the western does not and it have a repair-related inscription instead from Vijayanagara Empire era. The northern array also mostly lacks any ceiling art work except near the stairs in the middle, while the eastern array shows the greatest signs of damage and restoration