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 Fly back from
Tiruchirappalli to Bengaluru.
October 14, 2019
At Meenakshi temple Rama had missed the darshan of Meenakshi
due to time constraint. As she wanted very much to revisit the temple, I
decided to join her as I was also equally interested. The temple was not near
the hotel and we need to go through the city to reach the temple on the other
side. We got up early, like 5 a.m. and the two of us left the hotel after
drinking some coffee. Michiko and Shyam decided to stay back. It was drizzling
when we left.
Driving through the city is quite an experience and you
really see what life is like for people in this city. This is what interests me most.
https://youtu.be/92DsEEDOaVo
Even though it was early hours in the morning, the city was awake,
and the traffic was considerable. In India, towns do not sleep, they are always
full of people. We reached the temple and entered through one of the entrance gateways. The tall structure in the center is the gateway with its Gopuram. It was a rainy day and the path to the entrance is not paved.
Meenakshi temple is very grand and I had never seen a temple
with service 365 days this grand. The rush of the pilgrims was comparable to
the one at Tirupati, another famous temple in Andhra Pradesh. The temple was
crowded with folks from North India speaking a variety of languages. There is
very little explanation given by guides (all most non-existent) as to what, if
any taking place. Those who understood the language gave some explanation to
others in broken sentences as the number of languages is truly bewildering.
Even I, explained what I heard in Tamil to folks who spoke only Hindi, and my
knowledge of Hindi is abysmal, and knowledge of Tamil sub-par. God forgive me!
On the walls of the temple, inside the precincts are
depicted the various events in the life of Meenakshi from birth through infancy
to adulthood and her marriage carved in stone. My sister Rama explained as much as she could in that short time. They are very detailed and beautiful.
It is a great pity that I did not have my camera. The carvings depicted the
life of people at that time and I even recognized the early foreigners who
visited India though their dress. Probably, I will not have another chance to
visit, a pity.
Madurai Meenakshi temple is one of the three temples often
visited by people who practice the Tantri system of worship called Sri Vidya. The worshipping of mother goddess is central to this tantric system of which my
sister Rama is an adherent and has been practicing for very, many years. It requires
a high degree of personal discipline and follow strict guidelines to reach the
various levels of this tantric system. It often involves long and sleepless nights;
going through “mouna vrata” (meditating without speaking with anyone); and
other severe rituals. The Kamakshi temple in Kanchipuram, Tamilnadu is another
temple where Sri Vidya people often visit.
My system Rama explained to me the various manifestations of
the mother goddess, and of Sri Vidya (Shri Vidya - Wikipedia) as
we circled around the Sanctum Sanctorum of goddess Meenakshi. This alone made
my visit worthwhile. Curiously, we belong to Sri Vaishnava sect and Sri Vidya
is of origin in Shaivism. However, many people follow Sri Vidya irrespective of
their core sect as it promises benefits of all kind materialistic as well as
spiritual.
We also managed to visit the thousand pillared Mandapam
which has been converted to a museum of the temple. With its contents going
back centuries, it has many awesome and beautiful carvings.
The museum is not well maintained in my humble opinion. The authorities should
show more respect by allocating resources. Indian temples are very rich and the
proportion of funds to maintain our heritage appear rather very meager. If you
happen to visit the Meenakshi temple, please make it a point to visit this museum. There
are also photographs taken when famous dignitaries visited this museum.
We left the temple around 8 a.m. and took the same long way
back to the hotel. Before I left, I did not fail to notice the shops that were
a few feet away from the temple ramparts. There were several shops owned by
Muslims (by the name of the shop) who were selling temple-related art and other
objects which of course includes all kinds of idols (I did not enter to verify
this). When it comes to commerce, there is no religion, like guys I know who never ate
meat in their lives, flipped burgers at McDonald's!
We had an excellent South Indian breakfast and since it was a buffet,
we gorged ourselves with food, since each item was better than the other. We
could also drink the famous Café Coffee Day for breakfast.
Interestingly, even in the deep South like in Madurai, the hotels (Poppy's has a 4-star rating) do not provide South Indian meals for lunch. They provide either North Indian or Chettinad meals. We never ate a meal in this hotel except for the first day. We were hungry and somehow managed.
After breakfast, we left for the famous Azhagar Koil (temple). We reached
the temple around 11:00 a.m. The crowd was sparse at the temple. It was a very
hot day. It is not easy to walk barefooted on pebbles and hot granite slabs. It
is so hot you actually need to sprint!
Darshan at Sri.Azhagar Koil
Here are some pictures of the road to the temple.
Distant view of Yanaimalai. Loosely translated as 'Elephant Hill'.
Azhagar (also read as Alaghar) Koil is the beautiful Vishnu temple in
Madurai on top of the Alaghar hills. The pillars of the Kalyana Mandapam of
this temple have a sculpture that reminds me of Hoysalas sculptures of Karnataka.
The Utsava Murthi is Sunderarajan and his consort is Sundaravalli. There are
also shrines for Yoga Narasimha, Sudarshanar and Andal. We paid our respects
and had darshan of Yoga Narasihma and we started back to Madurai. The drive from
Madurai to this temple is delightful and the drive up to the temple winds
through what appears to be a forest, full of monkeys and birds. Here are the
monkeys eyeing the bananas on the vendor's cart.
On the
way back to Madurai from Alaghar Koil - YouTube
Views of the main gopuram of the temple.
Details from the left and right
Again, as in my previous blogs, the gopuram is colorized and
in this process, the fine details have blurred. Each tier tells a story from our
epics as shown in the GIF below.
Left the temple around 11:50 a.m. We returned to Madurai and here is an Indian highway-side diesel filling station.
Rama had plans to visit the famous Murugan temple at Thiruparankundram and we followed the plan. We headed back towards Madurai as it is nearer to our hotel. The Murugan temple is about 85 miles from the Adi Jagannathan temple
Sri Tiruparankundram Murugan temple
This temple of Murugan is one of the most famous of Murugan
temples due to its puranic significance. This was the location of a great
battle with the evil demon, Surapadma. After this battle, he married the
daughter of Indra, Devayanai. He also
married Sundaravalli because of another previously determined divine
arrangement. The temple seems to have been conceived by the divine architect
Vishwakarma himself.
Here are young acolytes walking in the vicinity of the
temple.
As it is common to many Hindu temples, especially the old
ones, the shops encroach on the very portals of the temple. It would be so nice
if these are moved away from the temple so that cleanliness measures can be implemented,
and traffic congestion reduced. 
This is the entrance to the temple. The first picture shows the
entrance and the second shows another view of the entrance. I could have taken the picture from a distance to get the full view of the temple, however, it was a very busy day, and was near impossible to get an uncluttered view.
The temple has some of the most beautiful sculptures of the
Hindu gods and goddesses, of Ganapati, of Kama, and a host of others. As I
remarked in the other blogs, the ceiling and the pillars are colorized. I
personally would have liked to keep the original as is. Even so, they have left a few without color and others partially colorized.
Here are the many sculptures of Hindu Gods, demi-gods, and Hindu personages.
The first image is that of '
Patanjali", the sage (2nd Century B.C.) who gave YOGA as described in his work, Yoga Sutra. He may be called the father of Sanskrit as he wrote the Sanskrit grammar in his
Mahabhasya . The third stone carving is that of
Varaha, an incarnation of Vishnu.
The first image is that of Rati and Manmatha, the celestial couple who personifies eternal love.
Views looking from inside-out and outside-in to the temple.
Stone horse at the entrance of the temple. Sculpted horses are found in many temples across India. It is believed that they existed even in 4000 B.C. It may be noted that the history of horses in the Indian subcontinent is contested by many.
Few other views in the outer prakaara of the temple.
Temple shop selling temple articles, books on sthala purana (local history), printed material about the temple, and souvenirs
Waiting for our driver to show up.
The next collage is from a different Murugan temple looking at the timestamp in the images. However, I have no notes regarding this visit.
We probably visited this famous Murugan temple the same day. This temple is also located in Madurai.
Sri Pazhamudircholai Murugan temple
These images, most likely are from the
Sri Pazhamudircholai Murugan temple. The first two of the carvings are that of two of the
Maruthas, demi-gods of wind. The top right is that of Kamadeva, or, Manmata and he is usually depicted as riding a parrot. He carries a bow of sugarcane and an arrow adorned with nine fragrant flowers. In India, it is often said, if one is in love, he has been hit by an arrow from
Kama. Western readers may be aware of the treatise on lovemaking, Kama Sutra.
This was our last visit for the day. We returned to Poppy's hotel after having dinner in the same restaurant as before. Our driver, a great guide being a Muslim was not familiar with the vegetarian eating places, which I think are not lacking in a city like Madurai, the home of many South Indian Brahmins.
