Kumbakonam: A memorable Sojourn

Kumbakonam , a temple city in Tamil Nadu , I realised could be a base camp for any temple enthusiast.Tiruvarur,Chidambaram,Tanjore,Velankanni,Nagapatnam,Trichy,Karaikal are all located less than a 100 kms from this city, which itself boasts of many beautiful and mythologically significant temples.


The name of the city finds its roots in the Hindu Mythology. Lord Brahma, fearing the catastrophic effects of the “pralay” (deluge) at the end of Dwaparyuga approaches Lord Siva to do something to save the “prithvi” (earth).With blessings of Lord Siva, Lord Brahma floats a Kumbha carrying Amudha (Amrut), religious grass, sacred thread and evolution seeds. This kumbha travels southwards from Mount Kailash along with the flood water and in the course leaves behind the articles of the Kumbha at different places. Lord Siva then takes the form of a hunter and breaks open the Kumbha with an arrow at the place which is present day Kumbakonam. Lord Siva, in his incarnation as the hunter, makes a “sivalinga” out of the wet sand where the water from the Kumbha had fallen. Thus, the city got its name from this incident of the “Kumbha”.The sivalinga is special in the sense that it was made by the “mahadev” himself and is located in the “Kumbheshwar” temple. The sivalinga is also different in the sense that it is not made of granite and it appears a little tapered at the top. No abhishekam is performed on the linga by liquids lest it’ll lose its shape. There are 2 more Siva temples namely Kashi Vishwanath temple adjacent to a lake and the Nageshwar temple.

Then there are temples of Lord Vishnu: Sarangapani (God in the “ananta shayanam” position) and Chakrapani (God in the “Sudarshan Chakra” form).Excellent temples with breathtaking architecture is something which can be said about all these temples. There is a Ramaswamy temple in which the complete Ramayana is depicted in 3 rows of some 210 odd paintings on the walls surrounding the sanctum santorum.

A little distance from Kumbakonam is Tirunageshwaram which is famous for temple of the much revered and often feared “Rahu”.A milk abhishekam is done to Rahu every hour for which there is always a beeline of devotees. The same temple also has a temple of Devi Uma ( Parvati) with Goddess Saraswati and Goddess Lakshmi.Going ahead on the same route, we see another beautiful temple of “Upaliappan”( Lord Vishnu).A few kilometres from Kumbakonam is the temple of Lord Karthikeyan ( Swami Malai) which I could not cover this time.

How can I forget Raju, the auto driver who took me around all these temples in less than 4 hours? I got his contact through my uncle who is a seasoned temple visitor and has extensive contacts with guest houses, auto-taxi drivers in all the major temple cities of India. I never imagined that this trip planned at such a short notice will be so satisfying. There are certainly some forces at work. May the forces be with me.