Having turned habitual to pilgrimages during my masters in Bangalore, I planned to visit great temples in central TamilNadu. Unlike other trips which I usually go alone or friends, I went with my Mother. She wanted to visit these for long time now.
It was a 4-day trip and places included:
SriRangam, Trichy, Jambukeswaram, Thanjavur, Thiruvayuir, Thirunallar, Kumbhakonam, Vaitheeswaran Koil, Chidambaram
We started by taking Chennai exp from Hyderabad on sept 11th and a connecting train from Chennai Egmore, Guruvayur exp and reached SriRangam on the next day around 1pm.
World’s largest temple (until recently where Delhi’s SwamiNarayan temple broke this record) c
overing some hundreds of acres of land where most of the town resides in the walls (Prakarams ). Even the hotel where we stayed is inside 5th prakaram out of 7 (??). After refreshing we proceeded to the temple. What a big temple it was, truly amazing. The temple tower (gaali gopuram) is the world’s largest and can be seen directly from RockFort hill, Trichy about 20kms away. SriRangam is most sacred place specially for Vaishnavites and tops the list of 108 Divya Desams (prominent places) where Tirupati lies somewhere between 2nd and 4th place.
This is abode of Sri RanganathaSwamy, Lord Vishnu in a sleeping position on AdiSesha, giant serpent. Auspicious Thread ceremony (upanayanam) was being performed to the deity on the day we went. So it was heavily crowded. However we got a splendid darshan of Him. Later, we proceeded to Sri Ranganayaki ammavari temple and thousand pillar mantapa.
Next destination was Jambukeswaram, around 10kms from SriRangam.
Jambukeswaram:
This is one of the Panchabhoota sthalas of Lord Shiva, signifying Water. Other being Kanchi-Earth, Tiruvannamali-Fire, SriKalahasti-Air, Chidambaram-Sky. In this trip, after visiting this & Chidambaram, I’ve covered all five in the list. J
Evening palanquin seva was going on when we entered the temple. The architecture was amazing with a direct view of sanctum sanctorum from a long distance. The Shiva Linga lies in water here. Later visited Sri Akhilandeswari devi temple. They say, this avatar of Devi is as powerful as Kamakshi of Kanchi, Meenakshi of Madurai, Visalaakshi of Varanasi.
Trichy:
Reached here as early as 5.30am. Infact SriRangam and Jambukeswaram are considered outskirts of Trichy city rather than nearby towns. Trichy is a wonderful city and I liked it better than Madurai. The Rockfort temple of Lord Ganesha is the most striking place here. After climbing around 500 steps we reached the peak and had nice darshan. View of the city is awesome from this peak. One can see the temple towers of SriRangam and Jambukeswaram from this place.
Later in the day, we moved to Thanjavur (Tanjore) around 100 kms from here. We passed through NIT campus on the way.
One of UNESCO’s world Heritage sites from India, Thanjavur’s Sri Brihadeeswara temple is distinctly splendid. The architecture of the temple is amazing. It is known that the shadow of the Gopuram never falls on the land.
Built by Chola dynast
y emperors in around 12th century,
t
his temple stands distinguishes itself as masterpiece of the works of great Indian kings. The Shiva Linga is too big and fills up the entire sanctum-sanctorum. Priests perform Abhishekam standing on the top a ladder. The bull (Nandi) is very huge here.
We missed visiting Saraswati mahal library, where digitization of ancient tamil and Sanskrit literature is going on, one of few such centers in India. Hope pictures speak more than my words for this temple.
Next destination, Thiruvayuir is around 12kms from Thanjavur.
Thiruvayuir:
This not-so-famous village has ancient temple of Lord Shiva and Saint Thyagaraja, the great carnatic classical singer’s Samadhi. I definitely did want to visit this temple for its significance. Temple of Sri Thyagaraja is very small with His Deity, lying on the banks of river Kaveri. Original idols of Lord Rama worshipped by Sri Thyagaraja in those days are still present there. We were told by the priest that Sri Thyagaraja’s Samadhi is present 100 feet directly under his idol and also 5th generation of his family still resides in that village. Wanted to visit them to but couldn’t due to time constraints. Then we moved to Lord Shiva temple. I was shocked to see the state of this temple unlike Thanjavur temple just 15kms away. I didn’t understand why the Govt. officials didn’t develop this temple. There was a board outside asking for donations for providing day-long electricity to the temple as it has the same just for 2hrs in a day.
This temple is mentioned in the movie Aparichitudu / Anniyan where the actor and his family go for group concert on thyagaraja classics.
Then we proceeded to Thirunallar.
One of the famous sites for Lord Saneeswara temple, known for removing all sins of King Nala. This village is located around 10kms from Karaikal (Pondicherry UT). We planned accordingly so that we visit this shrine on Saturday evening. Milk & oil abhishekam was being performed when we visited the temple. Lord Shiva here is worshipped as Sri Dharbaranyeswara swamy.
This temple is shown in the Tamil/Telugu movie Shivaji too, where the actress is shown interrogated by the CBI.
After staying there that night, next day we proceeded to Kumbhakonam
This is world famous as “City of temples” consisting some hundreds of temples. We visited Rahu temple, Sri Saarangapani temple, Sri Kumbheswarar temple, Sri KodandaRama swamy temple etc. People say that it takes two days to visit all important temples here. I guess half of the city is covered by temples only. This city is base ground for important pilgrimage circuit called NavaGraha koil darshanam. Huge temples were constructed by emperors, one for each planet. So nine temples in all, where all are located in radius of 10-40kms from Kumbhakonam.
After lunch, we moved to our next destination Vaitheeswaran koil
Lord Shiva here is considered as doctor that he cures all diseases. Hence the name. Unlike in any other temples in India, Lord is worshipped by salt and pepper. I’m unaware of reason behind this practice. This place is very much known for Nadi Jyothishyam, a form of horoscope reading where the astrologer asks only for our name and takes two thumb impressions. He then searches few old palm leaves (Taala patralu) and reads one by one and asks few questions. We should only answer yes/no. after few matches he finds the script which belongs to our horoscope. He then reads out the content in Tamil and explains us our horoscope. It was around 70% correct in my case.
Next, we moved to Chidambaram around 20kms from here.
One of the pancha bhoota sthalas, Lord Shiva is worshipped here in form of Akasam (Space). This temple has got many unique practices. Unlike any other Shiva temple in the world, there is no Linga here. He is worshipped as Lord Nataraja, the God of dance. His consort is Lordess SivaKami. So this place is world famous for south Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam. Also beside the idol of Nataraja, there is curtain which priests unveil. We find few gold leaves on the wall. They say Lord Shiva resides there in the form of space; signifying eternity and N
OTHING.
They say there is a yantra on the wall that is worshipped. Another distinct feature is that abhishekam is not performed here to Lord Shiva, except for 6 times called MahaAbhisheka that is performed of idol of Nataraja, in the whole year one being on Maha Shivaratri. He is known as abhisheka-priya but its reverse case here. Luckily, we went on one of those six days where the priests were performing Maha Abhisheka with Vibhuti, some hundreds of litres of milk. Then the idols were beautifully decorated followed by Maha Mangala Harati. The whole event took about 4 hours from 8pm onwards.
Temple of Lord Vishnu in form of Sri Govindaraja Perumal, is situated just beside Lord Natarajar temple. This feature is very rare in Hindu temples. One can view the replica of this idol, if they watched Dasavataaram movie.
The priests here are from Deekshitar family who are few in number. Their dressing is very distinct. Until recently there was a protest for not allowing people to say their prayers (reciting some scripture) in Tamil where only Sanskrit was allowed.
Next day morning we started back to Chennai around 5 hours from here. Later boarded Chennai exp and returned to Hyderabad.
My picks from this trip: SRIRANGAM, THANJAVUR, CHIDAMBARAM.
