Visiting South Indian Temples and Places of Interest - Tanjore Temples October 16, 2019

 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 16, 2019

10/16

Our main objectives today are to visit the Brihadeeswarar temple in Tanjavur (Anglicized as Tanjore) and the Ganapati Rock temple. In the remaining time, we would explore other places.

The Big Temple or the Brihadeeswarar Temple

Brihadeeswarar (Brihadeshwara temple, the Big Temple) is the most representative of Tamil architecture in Tanjavur on the Southbank of the Kaveri river. Tanjavur is located some 350 km southwest of Chennai). It was built by the Tamil king Raja Raja Chola 1 (Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur - Wikipedia) during 1003-1010 A.D. After the Cholas, it came under the rule of Marathas for a while. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site part of the “Great Living Chola Temples”.  It is an engineering marvel considering the effort it must have taken to build the Shiva temple out of the granite of immense proportions.

The Big temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Monument

Brihadeshwara temple is a Shaivite temple dedicated to God Shiva. The fortified walls around the temple precinct were added in the 16th Century. Built from granite, the tower is one of the tallest in South India. It is just not one temple but a temple complex. There are separate shrines for other deities (Ganapati, Kartikeya, Parvati, Nandi, and others). It is a small wonder that it is the destination of many tourists.

The temple architecture evolved from the Chalukya era (5th and 9th Century), followed by the Pallava era superseded by the Chola period (850 to 1280 C.E). It may therefore be deemed as the culmination of the South Indian architectural style. The onslaught of the raids and wars by the Muslims from the North was controlled to some extent by the Chola kings. However, the inevitable damage was not completely contained.

We begin our story from here on.

We had a nice breakfast at Poppy's. It really was a great breakfast with idly, dosa, poori, kichadi, etc.  This is a good start.

We leave at 8:57 a.m. It was drizzling with an overcast sky. We take some umbrellas. 

People waiting for one of the inter-city buses in Madurai, TN, on a rainy morning

At 9:20 we follow the Tanjavur (Tanjore) road and visit Brihadeshwara temple.

Tamilnadu Tourism: Brihadeeswarar Temple – Murals/Frescos (tamilnadu-favtourism.blogspot.com)

We arrive at the Tanjore big temple at 9:59 a.m. We engaged a local guide, an excellent one. He could speak English quite well and sometimes spoke in Tamil as well. He was a very nice, friendly guy and he is one of the registered ones. It is best to avoid ad-hoc guides who are adept at exaggerating. He also took some pictures of our group.

Ramparts of the fort which, our guide said was built after the main temple was built.

Our group getting ready to go in

The first Gopuram at the entrance

There are stone inscriptions at various locations in the complex. It was the wisest choice made by the Cholas that has enabled these to survive despite the Mussulman invasions.

Nandi Mandapam

As soon as you enter through the gateway of the entrance you will see the imposing Nandi Mandapam. This is the structure that houses the sacred bull, Nandi. Nandi is the bull that is always associated with Shiva. The bull directly faces the Shiva statue in the main temple. 

Here are some pictures of this structure as well as the frescos painting in the ceiling of this structure.

Wide view of complex with Nandi Mandapam

Our group in front of the Mandapam.

Frescoes on the ceiling

The group with Nandi in the background

The smaller Nandi Mandapam that was built during the later Hoysala period

If you proceed past the Nandi Mandapam towards the main temple you will see the Nandi Kamba, a pillar of stone with brass covering. This structure is part of any Hindu temple. The pillar in front of Vaishnava deities is called the Garuda Kamba (Garudagamba)

Here is a detailed view of the base of this pillar.

Main Temple 

Just before you enter the main temple after climbing a few steps you encounter the 'Dwara Palakas' [Nandi and Mahakala] on either side of the entrance. These are immense monolithic structures carved in stone.

Dwara Palakas are literally the guardians of the temple deity. 

It is expected to take their

 permission to enter the inner sanctum

The outer surfaces of most Hindu temples are extensively carved with mythological stories as well as the depiction of scenes, animals, festivals related to those times. 

The group in front of the main temple

In addition to the Main Temple, there are a number of shrines for various related deities including one for an architect associated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karuvurar) with the Brihadeshwara temple whose lineage dates back to the celestial architect Vishwakarma himself.

Amman Temple 

Brihannayaki temple, also known as Amman temple, is dedicated to the divine consort. We did not enter the temple for want of time. However, there are fine sculptures and frescoes from the Maratta period.

https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3859408

https://tamilnadu-favtourism.blogspot.com/2016/01/brihadeeswarar-temple-periyanayaki.html

Subramanya Temple

Another of the related shrines is that of the God Subramanya, the first son of Shiva.  The Subramanya shrine was built during the Nayaka period. The inside of the temple has the main deity with his two consorts and is very rich in detailed exquisite sculptures. Again, we had to skip going inside. We really had half a day.

Here is a picture of the temple in our photo collection.

There was a considerable foreign presence during those times in addition to the invading Islamic invaders as seen in the above picture. There is a foreigner wearing a hat in the circled area.

An official description of the temple from the Archeological Survey of India is here:

In various locations in the temple complex, there are frescoes and the frescoes at the Nandi Mandapam were shown earlier.

Brihadeshwara Temple Frescoes

If you walk around the stone corridor in the outer periphery of the complex, you can see many more frescoes that were painted during various periods and sometimes painted over the earlier ones. The frescoes were painted during the times the land was ruled by the

• Cholas (11th Century), 
• the Nayakas (17th Century) of Vijayanagar Kingdom
• and the Marathas (18th to 19th Century).  

Here are some samples:

This YouTube video shows them with some introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gp7_vmVIwo

We visited the gift shop at the entrance there was a huge crowd. Two of the shops displayed the highlights of the Tanjore style paintings with gilt as one of the chief components and the exquisite metalwork handed down for generations to the metal-smiths of this town. 

The rain had not let up and it was wet everywhere. We finished our Big Temple visit around 11:28 and immediately left.

Metalwork demo

After the visit, not too far from the Big Temple on Raja Raja Street, we visited a small business run by some 5 artists dealing with the famous Tanjore paintings and brass/metal figurines castings. Madurai is known from antiquity for its metal craft and is famous all over India. 

In Madurai, they made the finest steel for swords with its distinct metallurgy (https://www.thebetterindia.com/158830/tamil-nadu-research-facts-damascus-steel/) in antiquity. 

The business supplied metal castings of figurines from various Tamil dynasties. The guy we visited was having a little foundry in his backyard and demonstrated to us the lost-wax process of making the brass figurines. We also visited his gallery of paintings which included paintings of Indian deities with gilt and local colors. These are famous all over India.

Lunch qt A2B Restaurant

After the demo and the visit, we had lunch at the A2B restaurant. It happened to be World Food Day. I did see people ordering more than they can eat and leaving behind the food. This was a one-stop restaurant where you can get food from various regions of India. Food was surprisingly good for such a generic eatery.

Our group's member Rama was interested in a specific  Ganpati temple that was supposed to be close by. We might have found it, had we searched, but temples open only after 4 p.m. and we could not wait that long. We went back to the hotel to take some rest.

Ucchi Pillayar Temple (Rock Fort Temple)

We left the hotel again at 4:00 p.m. as most temples open around that time. We arrived at the 7^th Century Ucchi Pillayar temple at 5:00 PM. This temple of God Ganesh was finished during the Vijayanagar kingdom and is also called Rock Fort temple as it is on a rock. To reach the temple you need to climb 407 steep steps. About 1/2 way is Shiva and Parvati temple. Michiko (a member of our group) was stopped at the halfway point because she was a foreigner, but an Indian lady visiting the temple strongly pleaded with the gatekeepers and got her in to visit the Shiva, Parvati temple. The temple official who stopped her later apologized profusely as the no-nonsense lady who pleaded made the official known her strong connections in New Delhi. We later met with the lady, and she wanted a picture with us.

Here is a stunning view of Madurai midway from the hilltop.

The river Cauvery flows quietly in the distance. This picture is from a rest area before reaching the final stop at the top.

Here is another view of the landscape below.

View of the Ganesha temple at the hilltop from the rest area.

We returned to the hotel after having dinner at the same restaurant in Madurai. Tomorrow good bye to Trichy, auf Wiedersehn!

Visiting South Indian Temples and Places of Interest - Madurai Temples October 14, 2019

 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.