Dravidian and about me!!

In my previous post and some other posts I mentioned that the architecture was Dravidian style. For some of my friends, who are not familiar with the term Dravidian, at this point I wanted to see the documents about who they are and what are some of the the languages of the Dravidians. Among many of us there is a misconception about this. Recently, someone told me that I am a Dravidian (since Tamil is my mother tongue) whereas they are Aryans since their tongue is Telugu (even gave me the meaning of Aryans as superior people). I am very happy to be a Dravidian. I can speak, read and write Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and English, of course. I can read Malayalam, but understand only some. My strength is in Telugu and English languages. My conclusion - all these four languages are Dravidian ones. Click on the highlighted words and read for yourselves. Please feel free to share your knowledge - all readers!!

Tanjavur (Tanjore) - Brihadeeswara Temple

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.

Tiruchanur question

This question was asked "Why go to Tiruchanur first?" (see the comment under the post dated May 9th in "Second Yatra begins" )

In the Vaishnava sampradayam, one has to take the blessings of the Thayar first because she is the one who forgives all our shortcomings and faults and intercedes with the Lord on our behalf. For those of you who know the first slokam in Venkateswara Prapatthi,

“Easaanaam jagathosya venkatapather Vishnoh paraampreyaseem,
thadvakshasthala nithya vaasara sikaam tatkshaanthi samvardhineem
padmaalankrita paani pallava yugaam padmaasanastham sriam vaatstalyaadi gunojvalaam bhagavateem vandey Jagan maatharam" (please forgive the typos. This is just for a reference).

It is a prayer to her. Great saints like Annamaacharya, Thyagaraja also prayed to her for blessings from the Lord Venkateswara.

Rameswaram saga continued,,,,,,,,,,,

This is one place I would like to go to visit again and again. I felt very peaceful here. All the five of us decided to do 'samudra snanam' (dip in the ocean). The waves were not high. They were not even close to the ones I saw in the Atlantic ocean in New Jersey and the Pacific ocean in California. I was not afraid of waters anyway. The couples held each other's hands and took three dips in that salt water (yucky salty - some got in to the mouth). Nirmala was uncomfortable and I had to help her put her head inside the water. I collected some sand in a bag to take back to Varanasi, to offer it to Lord Viswanatha. We brought Ganga water from Varanasi from our Chardham trip to offer it to Lord Shiva in Rameswaram. Hopefully our return trip to Varanasi would be like a pradakshinam and would complete our journey. When we came out, fully clothed and our clothes dripping in water, we found out that they would not allow us like that into the Temple. Which meant we had to find a place to change into dry clothes. Many Indian pilgrims have the knack of changing clothes on the banks of rivers etc., in public, but very discreetly. We did not have that talent.
Now, Nirmala got the bright idea about the Kalivela choultry and thought that we could get a room there. They had establishments in many other holy places. Nirmala and I had donated money to this organization on separate trips to Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh. Actually, we qualified for a free room and board in any of their choultries. But that day, all we needed was a room to change our clothes. After some inquiries, we found the place. The man at the front desk was not as polite as we had hoped. Nirmala offered some money and they let us use the room to shower and change.

As we entered the Temple, a man greeted us. I had my Ganga water container ready to offer to Shiva and I told him that. He told Rao that he would be our guide.( We tried to convince him and as well as Rao that we did not need one). But we failed. By the way, this happens in many Temples. You have to be firm or be ready to pay whatever they charge you at the end. Anyway, we were charged 800 rupees which included handing us over to other so called guides. One took us for the shower in the sacred wells. He got a bucket full of water out of each well and poured on our heads. Each well had a name like Ganga, Yamuna, Savithri, Saraswathi and so on. I remembered that in 1987 only Sulochana went through this procedure. My children and I just sprinkled a few drops of the sacred water on our heads. We walked in clothes dripping with water from well to well (these are actually sweet water springs. There was a place to change into dry clothes, which we did. And finally a priest who was part of this group was wonderful and guided us in performing the ancestral rites.I asked him on our way out, how much he got out of the 800 Rupees. He got only 200 rupees. The others just walked with us. I gave him an extra 300 from my purse. He gave me some sand also to take back to Varanasi. I saved this package and threw away the one I collected.

We went to the interior shrine and I was anxiously waiting to offer the Ganga water and the crowd was pushing us. We had bought some flowers and fruits to offer( from a shop outside the shrine). Rao asked me to leave the Ganga water container in that small offering basket. Witnessing that abhishekam was very important for me because not many people are blessed with this opportunity of bringing Ganga water. I fell behind because of the crowd pushing and the other four went ahead and had darsan and told me that our container with the holy water was opened and the water was poured on the Shiva lingam.
I was disappointed that I did not witness that. I got irritated that my companions did not wait for me when giving out our names and gothram etc. to the priest. But the crowd was unruly and they probably could not help but move with the crowd. My ego was hurt because I felt that I was the one who remembered to bring it with us and I was the one who carried it around so carefully.

After the tour of the rest of the Temple, we went back to the choultry to pick up our bags of some wet clothes. The management there asked us to have a meal. It was a simple, wonderful and satvic meal, cooked and served by two women volunteers. It was tough for us women to sit on the floor to eat. The two men were ok. Our driver also was served his meal in separate quarters. Now we got into the car and continued on our journey.

Panchabhootha sthalams - the 5 elements

Mandapam on the right is made of Rudrakshas - very artistic!!

Panchabhootha sthalams are five ancient temples in India where Lord Shiva is represented in the form of five elements – Air, Earth, Ether, Fire and Water.
The following are the five temples that represent Shiva in the form of five elements:

Air – Sri Kalahasti Temple at Kalahasti in Andhra Pradesh – Vayu Linga represents the element air or wind here. A continuous flame flickers when there is no air source in the interior of the temple.

Earth – Ekambareswara Temple in Kanchipuram – Shivalingam here is the element earth.It is believed to have been created by Goddess Parvathi from sand or earth.

Ether – Nataraja Temple at Chidambaram – Shiva is represented as ether or sky in an empty space. I mentioned this in my post on Chidambaram (as the Chidambara rahasyam}. Ether is known as ‘akasha’ in Sanskrit and is also referred as Sky (or Space) .


Fire – Arunachaleswara Temple or Annamalaiyar Temple at Thiruvannamalai – Here, Shiva represents the element fire.

Water – Jambukeshwara Temple or Thiruvanaikaval Shiva Temple in Srirangam – Jambukeshwara represents the element water. The deity is found under a Jambu tree over a small river. The small stream engulfs the idol during the rainy season.

I have seen all the five lingams mentioned above. Our future plan is to cover all of the 12 Jyothirlingam Temples. Of the 12, we have seen Srisailam, Kedarnath and Varanasi (during our Chardham trip) and Rameswaram . The Northern most is the Kedarnath Temple and the Southern most is the Rameswaram Temple. It sounds more exciting when you document like this!!!

Rameswaram

Now I am visible!!

No, Nirmala was not the photographer. We found a stranger who volunteered to take one.

I want to mention here that I am not posting in the order that we visited. Whichever place comes to my mind at the time I post, that is where we are going. Today, I would like to take you to Rameswaram. The drive was beautiful. I love waters, especially the water that makes sound - either water falls or water waves!!

Before giving an account of my experience, I want to add these.
This Shiva Temple (Shivasthalam) is one of the 12 Jyotirlingams and the southernmost one.

This was my second visit to Rameswaram. The first one was in 1987 with my friend Sulochana and my two children. My parents visited here in the early fifties and I still have the sea shells that they brought home. I was with them during their trip to Varanasi, but they left us behind for this trip.

This temple is mentioned in the Ramayana and is of historic and spiritual importance. It is famous for long corridors and towers. There are 36 teerthams (I am not sure about the number) out of which 22 are in the Temple compund. These waters have medicinal value, they say. It is said that Rama worshipped Shiva here before returning to his kingdom in Ayodhya. There are two lingams here. One installed by Rama himself (made of sand or earth by Sita) is called Ramalingam and the other brought by Hanuman from Kasi (Varanasi) is called kasilingam. Why two lingams? Well, Hanuman was sent on this errand to Kasi. But the auspicious moment was arriving and Rama anticipated a delay in Hanuman's return and decided to go ahead with the pooja. The Kasi lingam is also called Hanuma lingam.

The architecture is awesome. the Nandi (the bull) is huge. Probably 18X20 feet. The gopuram (tower?) is about 125 feet tall.T he corridors are probably the longest in the world. I have taken some photos of these corridors and will add them later. There are more than 4000 pillars in these corridors. A must see. We were told that these rocks were imported from other parts of Tamil Nadu and are not local to that area. There is a lot modern history attached to this Temple. You can visit other sites for more details.
More to come............

General Information

See the driver in the middle!!!!! Click on any photo to see it enlarged.

I know that I wrote that we did not make any advance hotel reservations. we did not have any problem finding good ones after some search and after more driving. having come to the conclusion that our driver had no knowledge of the province.

But we went during rainy, non-peak season. If at all possible, I would advise that you make some arrangement. Another thing disappointing to me was that no hotel served a full meal for dinner. Only Tiffin (palaharam) type. Dosa, Idli, parata, poori etc. I got tired of it after a few nights. Lunch time meals were great!! I finished my Granola bars too soon. Before we started on this trip we were told by some of our relatives that drinking water could be a problem in Tamil Nadu. But each hotel we stayed in supplied us with good supply of water to drink, hot water to bathe etc. We spent very little money on bottled water on this trip. We spent a lot on our Chardham trip. Most of the hotels were located near shopping areas, internet service facilities, pharmacies (drug stores), auto rickshaw and Taxi stands.

If any of you have useful advice, please feel free to post your comments.

Swamimalai etc.

Nirmala's research and list said that we visit atleast six Subrahmanya Swami (Murugan) Temples. Swamimalai was one of them - which being close to Kumbakonam, we covered in this trip. There are many in the Southern states of India. I remember the following names in Tamilnadu: Tiruparamkundram, Thiruchendur, Swamimalai (Swaminatha Swami), Palani (Dandayudhapani) and Tiruthani Temples. When my sister was working as a professor in Palani, I visited the Palani Subrahmanya Temple, the first time. When we were students in SV University, Nirmala and I visited the Tiruttani temple a few times. Thiruchendur Murugan Temple, I visited with my children and my friend Sulochana in 1987.

Swamimalai temple: This is about 10 km from Kumbakonam. The story goes that this is where Murugan taught the meaning of "OM" to His father Lord Shiva. This was the first time I came here. His consorts are Valli and Devayani. This is another thing that intrigued me. In Andhra, we say Devasena not Devayani. Also, Devayani was Sukra's (the guru of Demons = raakshsasa) daughter who married the king Yayati. for those who want to know more, please click on the names. It is a long story and from the epic Mahabharata.


Thiruvalansuzhi Vinayakar Temple: Actually, this is more of Shiva Temple, but is famous for the Vinayaka sculpture which is white in color. Normally, all the statues are black or dark slate color (For those of you who don't know). This is located about 4 kms from Kumbakonam and is very close to Swamimalai. The speciality of this Temple is that the river Kaveri (Cauvery) prayed to Lord Siva by doing apradakshinam (doing pradakshinam from right to left. Normally in any Temple, we do it from left to right, which is clockwise)) The name for lord Siva in this temple is "Sadai mudi nathar".

Most of the Tamilians know about Avvaiyar, a great devotee of Murugan. I still remember my father taking me (when we were visiting my relatives in Chennai) to see this movie about her devotion and how Lord Muruga came in the form of a young boy to test her devotion. In those days, I did not understand much Tamil. But, we both had interest in listening to the music. She was a poetess also.