Visiting South
Indian Temples and Places of Interest
Our trip
routes
Fly to
Madurai and drive to Rameshwaram stay there for the night. Drive back to
Madurai and stay in Madurai. Drive to Kumbakonam and Flyback from
Tiruchirappalli to Bengaluru.
October 13, 2019
We had an excellent breakfast at our hotel. We leave at 9:17
A.M. We also had a driver replacement since the first driver had some personal
problems. We will be heading back to Madurai.
Right on NH87, we turn left to visit the famous Divya Desham
(105), the famous Adi Jagannatha Perumal Temple.
Source: Google Maps
Receiving blessings at the Thiruppullani Arulmigu Shri
Adhi Jagannatha Perumal Temple
The temple is in Thiruppullani, a village in the Ramanathapuram
district, not far from Rameshwaram. As per the legends, God Rama rested on a
bed of dry grass (Darba) while praying to Samudra Raja to support him in his
invasion of Lanka. Darba in Tamil is 'Pul' and hence, the village is named
Thiruppullani. This temple is celebrated in the early Divya Prabhanda of 6th to
9th century CE. The temple has Adi Jagannatha (Lord of the Universe) with his
consorts, Sridevi and Bhudevi.
This temple was built around the 8th century CE. Later Cholas and, Pandyas contributed to the
enhancements. The Cholas ruled for almost 500 years, and the Tamil culture propagated as far as the Philippines. You can read some of its histories in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Jagannatha_Perumal_Temple). There is a rare image of 13th century Krishna, dancing on a snake in this temple.
On approaching the temple
Inside the temple
The Sanctum Sanctorum
The inner Prakaram corridor
This temple is also known for attracting childless couples,
who come here and pray for blessings. They offer little cradles made of metals
and tie them to the Ashwattha (ficus religiosa, Bodhi tree, Peepul tree)
in the temple precincts. They also go around the Ashwattha tree and the nagas
(fertility symbols) three times, praying God to bestow them with the progeny.
The Aswattha Pradakshina
Pradakshina is a Hindu ritual in all Hindu temples where
the devotees go round the Sanctum Sanctorum or a holy religious icon three
times after which they enter the inner temple to view the deity and pray. In
the picture below, the devotees who are praying for children go round the
Peepul (considered sacred) tree three times.
Naga Prathishtana
Another Hindu ritual meant for childless couples to pray for
children.
Visiting Meenakshi Temple
About Meenakshi Temple
Meenakshi Temple (a.k.a. Meenakshi Sundereshwarar among other
names) is in Madurai, Tamilnadu (9.919504° N, 78.11934° E). The temple was built
around 600 A.D. It is a major pilgrimage destination for Hindus of the Shaiva
sect. The temple is on the southern bank of the Vaigai river dedicated to the
Goddess, Meenakshi, wife of God, Shiva (one of the three Indian trinities). You
can reach it by both by train and by air. The Chittirai festival in this temple
attracts more than a million tourists/pilgrims during 10 days in April-May.
Meenakshi temple was destroyed and built again in the 14th and
15th Centuries. Temples in India were known to carry riches and the most
valuable items were hidden inside the temple. The invaders mistook that the
jewels were hidden inside the stone idols and they decapitated the idols,
damaged them. You can go anywhere in India and see this atrocity. This
destruction of the temples is also recorded by the Muslim historians of that
era. Meenakshi temple was destroyed by the infamous Malik Kafur from the Delhi
Sultanate.
The temple is also known for the celebration of a celestial
wedding, the wedding of Meenakshi to Shiva (here, in this temple he is called
Sundereshwarar, the handsome Shiva). The bride is given away by none other than
her brother, God Vishnu. The marriage is attended by the whole universe, and
this is depicted on the walls, the gopurams, the corridors, and the ceilings.
This account integrates the two major sects in Hinduism, the Shaivites and the
Vaishnavites.
Source: Richard Mortel from Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia - Mariage of Shiva and Parvati (Meenakshi) witnessed by
Vishnu, Meenakshi Temple, Madurai (2)
The temple precinct is extensive, covering some 14 acres in the
heart of the very old city mentioned in the 6th Century texts. Meenakshi temple as it stands now has 14
gopurams (45 to 50 meters high). It has many sculpted halls and Mandapams
(resting places inside the temple, also repurposed for some temple events). The
thousand pillared halls is now a museum (not well kept in the humble opinion of
the author) with many more sculptures, photographs of notables who visited this
place, etc.).
Source: Bernard Gagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3635292
It is a pity that the city authorities have left the city
businesses to inch towards this fabulous temple. The Sanctum Santorum has the
emerald idol of Meenakshi. To reach this you need to traverse, several gopurams
that are gateways to the Sanctum Santorum. The gateways are the entrances to
the concentrically laid Prakarams.
Highlights of our visit to the temple
We left the hotel at 17:09 and, our object was to visit the
Meenakshi temple.
Meenakshi temple is very far from the city. One of the largest
temples I have seen so far. Although it is immense, it is in the midst of some
very small streets, from the Northgate we approached. It looks as if the city walked
up and stopped at the entrance of the temple. The traffic was horrendous with a
melee of cars, trucks, autos, buses, bicycles, and of course cows. Cows had
parked at the entrance as the devotees before leaving the temple give the
bananas and other eatables to the cows. The small shops near the temple sell a
variety of things from temple gifts, flowers, coconut and betel leaves, and
other offerings that pilgrim take with them during the darshan. As I had
mentioned earlier, there are a sizeable Muslim population and Muslim vendors
selling temple gift materials including idols. Well, the business has no religion.
One nice feature of this temple was that they had a small,
well attended, free service to look after the footwear of the devotees while
they are inside the temple. It was completely run by women and they were very
efficient. Still walking barefoot is something of a challenge as you may have
to jump across puddles and walk on top of pebbles.
The temple is guarded by Police who make sure that the
people entering do not carry suspicious carry-ons, cell phone cameras, etc. It
looked efficient and as usual, I did not take my camera. I regretted as I
could see many had sneaked in the cameras and were taking pictures, something
unimaginable in Japan (just a notice would do for them).
The temple has painted ceilings with colorful, floral
patterns. The corridor pillars are also painted in rainbow colors. There is a
painting of Shiva Lingam in the ceiling. The painting has an illusionary effect.
Looking from any angle the spout of the lingam is always presented to the eyes.
This 2-D painting, it appears, is quite ancient although I have not found any
specific reference and it. The image
gets painted over from time to time. This trick of the eye (trompe l'oeil
in French) effect can also be found in western art, but in Madurai temple it
really hits you.
MaduraiDiff.jpg is
from the site, http://marvellousmadurai.freetzi.com/#myPage
Even in this copy of a copy, the effect is remarkable (look from left and then look from right).
We all could enter the temple including Michiko. We went
through the gopurams and went round the concentric corridors to reach the last
corridor before the sanctum Santorum. Indian temples are not only very animal friendly
but they also consider them to be sacred. You can see sacred cows inside the temple
that participate in many of the events. Elephants are traditionally used in
temples as they carry the images of Gods (pilgrims lookup) and circle the corridors around the
sanctum sanctorum. Elephants also bless the pilgrims by placing a reassuring
trunk on the head of the pilgrims and the handler gives the elephant a snack. You can see this in this temple and in many
other temples. Michiko was pleasantly surprised to get blessed by the blessing
elephant.
Since we did not carry cameras, we could not take any
pictures inside the temple. But Shyam arranged for a photo of all of us taken
from one of the corridors, to include the gopuram across the Kalyani(little
sacred pond in the temple) by the temple photographers.
There was a huge rain and the outer Prakaram, before the exit
to the streets was filled up like a swimming pool. Shyam had light bandages on
both feet due to some injury and Michiko was terrified as she does not like wet areas.
Fortunately, a 6-seater beach buggy (the temple has arranged for quick transport) came and took us to a dry area. We were
really blessed. We left the temple around 7:30 but the temple precincts were inundated,
and the roads were slushy. We had to wait a little bit outside for our driver
to show up.
We took off from the temple and started driving towards our
hotel. Both I and Rama are addicted to strong coffee without sugar. There are
lots of street-side, small coffee shops, but all of them use coffee decoction
with added sugar. Black coffee tastes like syrup. Finally, we stopped at a
place called Om Lakshmi Bhavan, where we could get coffee without sugar. They
also had snacks and dinner but not without garlic.
We continued our return journey, and as it was almost dinner
time, we stopped at a restaurant called Sangeetha. This was the only one we
could find, after some inquiries, that served exclusively vegetarian food sans
garlic. We had dinner at Sangeetha.
Entrance to restaurant Sangeetha.
Most South Indian restaurants have eating areas in
air-conditioned rooms as well as areas without air-conditioning. The downside
of air-conditioned rooms is pesky mosquitoes that seem to prefer these somewhat
intentionally darkened rooms.
After dinner, Rama collected some spicy powders (simply
called 'Podi') to carry. If we cannot find a restaurant that did not provide
garlic-free preparation, she would just eat rice with spicy powder and some
yogurt. Vegetarians are tough, strict vegetarians even tougher!
We returned by about 9:00 p.m. to the hotel. We, I and
Shyam decided to have drinks at the hotel's bar. As I mentioned earlier, bars,
especially in India, have intentionally poor lighting. It is hard to understand this. The sofas in
the bar were so unwieldy, it is hard to reach for the drinks and snacks. We
hope tomorrow will be a better day without rain.
