Kumbakonam Temples

Kumbakonam is known as the City of temples as there are a few thousand temples in and around Kumbakonam.
The Kumbeswara is the largest and the oldest Shiva temples located in the center of the town of Kumbakonam. The presiding deity of this temple is Lord Kumbeswara and the presiding Goddess is Sri Mangalambigai. There is a shrine dedicated to Adi Vinayaka (Lord Ganesh).
It is a huge and colorful Temple with intricate carvings. The Mahamaham festival takes place here once every 12 years during the Tamil Month of Masi (February/March), when pilgrims from all over India visit Kumbakonam to take a holy bath in the sacred Mahamaham tank located in the heart of the town. We were not there during that season. But we met with the Sabari Malai crowd. Where ever we went, they were ahead of us in their black clothes in most of the Temples, starting from Kapilateertham in Tirupathi.

Sarangapani Temple:
The next Temple we saw was of Lord Sarangapani (his consort Komalavalli) a Vaishnavite temple. It is twelve storied close to 150 feet high and was built during the 15th century (some claim as 13th century). The architecture again is superb. Click here to see the broader view of the Temple.
This temple is the largest of the Vishnu temples in Kumbakonam. It is among the 108 Tirupatis. First Srirangam, then Tirupathi and the third in line is of Sarangapani. The shrine is in the form of a chariot. The beautiful tank adjoining this Temple is called Hema Pushkarini and on the other side of which was Adi Kumbeshwara temple. A hundred-pillar hallway (I did not count) from the seventeenth century was awesome. We enter through a twelve-storied pyramidal gopuram which is one of the largest gopurams in South India. We saw the statues of many Alwars here.

Someswara Temple
Someswar Temple is situated in the southern portion of Sri Sarangapani temple, facing East. It has two entrances, one on the East side and the other on the South side. Gopuram is five-tiered. Arumugam and Thenar Mozhi Ammal are the deities in this temple. To me this Temple's gopuram looked very different from that of the others (Sarangapani, Chakrapani and Ramaswamy)

In very close proximity to the Sarangapani Temple are that of Ramaswamy and Chakrapani.

Ramaswamy Temple:
Here the main attraction is the the paintings of Ramayana. The story goes that the only temple where Lord Rama, Sita are in the same platform and Lord Hanuman is playing the veena instead of reading the Ramayana. The entire deity is said to be made from Saligrama monolith. Again, the intricacy of the carvings on the pillars is exquisite. In most of these Temples, no photography and no foreigners were allowed after a certain point. So, I stopped taking the camera with me altogether.

Chakrapani Temple:
This Temple is situated about 1.5 km from Ramaswamy Temple. The main deity is Chakraraja (his consort Vijayavalli). The uniqueness of this Temple is that Bilwa pooja (which is normally done in Shiva Temples) is done for Vishnu who is in the form of Chakrapani) Here, the Chakra stands for the Sudarsana Chakra.

By the way, at this point, I have to mention that our driver finished his worship and darsans ahead of us. He spent some of his daily allowance (that Nirmala handed over to him) on CDs. He was supposed use that money for his food and lodging. Since he was eating with us, we paid for his meals and slowly, I saw him using the hotel room occupied by Rao and his brother (we paid for the extra bed) - hence he had extra money in his wallet. I added this bulletin just to break the monotony of my Temple stories. Also, he changed into black clothes and when I asked him , he said that he was doing the Sabari Malai diksha.

Now last, but not the least was Kasi Viswanatha Temple.

This Temple is situated very close to the Mahamaham tank. Here the main deity is Kasi Viswanatha (Visalakshi is the consort).
I remembered the Viswanatha Temple of Varanasi. (These two names used to be very common for children in our families. Actually, my mother's name was Visalakshi and one of my nephews who lives in Chennai is named after Viswanatha). There were statues of nine kanyakas (virgins) which are the 9 holy rivers, namely Ganga, Godavari, Kaveri, Krishna, Narmada, Saraswati, Sarayu , Tungabhadra and Yamuna. Also, to be noted is the fact that the sthala lingam was present in the southern part of the temple. It was worshipped by Ravana and is believed to grow with ages.