This was my second visit to this wonderful place. The first time being in 1987 with my children Gopal and Gayatri and my friend Sulochana. Surprisingly, I have more fond memories of this place from my first trip than from the current trip. I felt strongly then that the Indian govt. should be spending money on renovating and maintaining this kind of beauty, history, tradition etc. It may not attract as many tourists as the Taj Mahal does (which is beautiful, but, nothing but a tomb). Anyway, this place takes you back into history. The exterior of the temples did not look colorful. The compound was huge. I took some photos of the Saraswathi mahal (library). I am trying to upload photos - for unknown reasons, this blogger travels into 'infinity' and finally, I am closing it. Be patient with me for a few weeks and I will have a separate post of all the photos.Thanjavur is very famous for the paintings. Commonly known as Tanjore paintings. Nirmala gave one of Lord Venkateswara to Gayatri as a wedding present. It is exquisite!!!
The famous Temple here is of Brihadiswara, a Shiva Temple. The inside shrine wasn't that huge. Perhaps the Royal family of ancient times built this just for their family!!!!!
It takes a life time to really see all that is here in these temples. This visit was the first one for the other four in the group. They were extremely happy. Now about this Temple in detail:
The entrance on the east, where we enter, is very imposing. On either side of this are two small shrines of Ganapathi and Subrahmanyam (Murugan). When you walk further, there is a Gopuram about 90 feet in height. This way leads into an outer court. A second and more magnificent Gopuram leads us to the main court in which the temple is built. The inner court is is surrounded by something like a court yard about 500 feet long and 250 feet broad and is well paved with brick and stone. The western and northern wings have Sivalingams and there are paintings over these walls depicting sixty-four Nayanars. The outer portion of this temple is about 800 ft X 300 ft (a little less perhaps)
The main shrine is of Brihadeeswara (I am not even attempting the Tamil pronunciation here) which in Samskrit means, the Great God. It is situated on the western end of this court yard.
Besides the the Sanctum sactorum (garbhagriham), there are 5 mandapams here. I think this why the actual temple appeared small to me. Several in the same yard!!. Anyway, the five mandapams are:
Araadhana mandapam, Maha mandapam, Narthana mandapam, Sthapana mandapam and Vaadya mandapam.
Sthapana mandapam has a shrine for the great saint Thyagaraja.
The statues of the dwarapalakas (guardians of the gate) were exquisite!! The sivalinga is the grandest!
The tower over the shrine is called Dakshina Meru (at Kailasam, it is the Uttara-Meru).
There is a lot of history about the king Rajaraja Cholan who reigned this part of the country and I don't have much knowledge in that area.
The great Vimana is a little over 200 feet and is of the Dravidian style of architecture, and has fourteen storeys.
The other sub-shrines are of Subrahmanya (northwest corner), Goddess Brihanayaki, Ganapathi, Chandeeswara. Dakshinamurthy and Nataraja on the Northeast corner. Worth mentioning are the great Dhwaja-sthambham and the huge Nandi (the sacred bull) located in the center. The Nandi measures 12ft in height and close 20 ft, in length and width and weighs about 20 tons. There are two versions of where the stone was brought from and I forgot what they were.
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