Posts from Arunachala-live

Sri Raghavendra Swami was one of the great proponents of the Madhva philosophy (Dvaita or Duality believing that God and Man are different entities and that Man should approach God through devoted worship). He lived in South India during the 16th century. For nearly 50 years, he was the revered head of one of the great peethams (hindu religious authority). He excelled in many fields such as logistics, Mimamsa, music, yoga, dharmashastra and all the 64 vedic arts. He was believed to be an avatar of Prahlada, a famous child devotee of Lord Vishnu and so he chose his Brindavanam or divine abode (Mantralaya) on the banks of the river Tungabadhra, where Prahlada had performed his yajna in Krita yuga. It is said that the stone used for the Brindavan was sanctified by the touch of Sri Rama and Sita in the Treta yuga.

The Raghavendra Swamigal shrine can be found on the outer girivalam road right beside the Hanuman or Anjaneya temple. It is situated on a large courtyard with the backdrop of Arunachala. The shrine consists of a stone statue of Sri Raghavendra depicted against a stone scultpure of Kamadhenu, the celestial wish fulfilling cow. The maintenance and running of the temple are funded by a local private group of Raghavendra devotees who come daily in the evening to participate in the pujas. There is also a daily feeding of Sadhus at this time. On festival days this temple is often a venue for carnatic music concerts with the participation of good musicians from Chennai. And so this has become a regular halt for traditional music lovers in the area.

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Recently the Renuka Amman temple in Adi Annamalai was the venue for a most spectacular and beautiful festival called the Laksha Deepam festival or the festival of One Hundred Thousand Lamps. This temple can be seen on the left side of the outer girivalam path right as one crosses the village of Adi Annamalai.

The festival took place on Thursday, April 14th which also happens to be the Tamil New Year. Around sunset, the temple courtyard was already filled with village people who had come to start drawing the Kolams or sacred designs on the ground. Though not much is known about the antecedents of the festival, it seems to be a way of welcoming the new year and also a ritual to propitiate the Goddess so that the summer would not be too hot and that She would send rain from time to time to cool the parched earth and the people.

The festival happenings itself are quite simple. First many beautiful colourful Kolams are drawn all around the temple and then one hundred thousand clay-oil lamps are placed and lit all over the arena. After this, the Goddes is venerated with a huge abhishekam and then finally brought outside in procession through the streets of the village.

It was really moving to see the rural folk, both men and women, young and old,  all dressed in their festive best and participating so enthusiastically in making the Kolams and arranging and lighting the one hundred thousand oil lamps. Many women devotees  were singing hymns in praise of the Goddess asking Her for blessings and cool rain during the hot summer. An elaborate Aarthi puja was performed after the lighting of the lamps. Later that night, the Goddess was beautifully decorated and then raised on a pedestal and placed on a wooden palanquin. She was then borne in procession by many men around the village of Adi Annamalai where the residents of the village honoured Her, made offerings  and worshipped her with devotion.

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Sona Theertham is a sacred tank of water situated on the outer girivalam path. It is located in a very pictoresque spot on the border of the innerpath forest and thus has an abundance of lovely old trees all around. The theertham has two Nandi statues flagging the entrance steps which lead down to it and also a cute little Ganesh shrine with a smiling sadhu priest who looks like a sweet chimpanzee. This seems to be quite an idyllic  place and often romantic couples come to sit here and enjoy the view.

On the opposite side there is a shrine to the Divine Mother under the title of Muthu Mariamman, a tamil name for goddess Parvathi. Of recent years this little shrine has become quite popular and on Sundays there is quite a crowd of devotees here especially vehicle owners who like to get their cars and trucks blessed with a little puja involving lemons and camphor flame.

A few metres after Sona Theertham on the same side is another pond called Krishna theertham due to the little Krishna shrine which is found just in front of it. This pond has fallen into a state of disuse and needs to be cleaned up ideally, which would make it another good clean natural source of water for the animals and birds which flock here to drink the water and enjoy the cool shade from the trees.

The remarkable feature about this spot is that even on a hot summer day it is always especially cool around here, probably due to the trees and also due to the plentiful water sources which are in concentration here. When one drives in here from elsewhere, one can feel the perceptible drop in temperature as soon as one enters the vicinity and due to this, often passersby stop here and relax to get relief from the summer heat.

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Arunachala-live has now been configured for the iphone and ipad for the benefit of those wishing to see Arunachala on apple mobile devices.  Previously this was not possible but our technical support staff has solved this problem in a very elegant manner.  We are very grateful for their diligent efforts.  The main page functionality has also been improved and you can notice some slight differences, especially when resizing your browser.  Previously the camera image was a fixed size even if the rest of the browser was resized.  It now resizes with the rest of the page allowing viewers to adjust the main page to their screen size.  We hope our mobile users enjoy the possibility to view Arunachala on their devices

The Arunachala-live team

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Vallalar was a saint who lived in Vadalur near Chidambaram during the early half of the 19^th century. This is the legend of his life and teaching: “Vallalar is believed to have realized the supreme and universal Divine integrally and his body became transformed and filled with Light so much so that it did not cast its shadow on the ground. He eventually attained a transformed and divine golden physical body, deathless and ever indestructible, shadowless and sleepless, and full of Light, Amrita and blissful energies and with a potential power to resurrect the dead into the body. He preached deathlessness of the body and said that it was by an error that people were consenting to death.  After about a year or two of attaining the Deathless body, he sacrificed it by dematerialization in 1874 in the very concrete Presence of the Divine at his place in order to make the God of Vast Grace – Light manifest so as to stay on and directly rule the earth and to enable him to enter into all the physical bodies universally”.

The shrine to Saint Vallalar can be found on the right side on the outer girivalam road about a hundred metres after the Nirudhi Lingam. It is set in a modern concrete structure with enclosed rooms and open areas.  One of the rooms  houses a shrine to the saint and also a small shrine to a Shiva Lingam and Nandi. There are also some statues of the saint in the open areas where one can sit and meditate, facing the hill. Within the courtyard, inside another room which is fully tiled with polished granite, there are shrines to the Ashtalingams, and the Navasakthi goddesses. On the walls of this room are gaudy modern cement sculptures of many gods and goddesses from the hindu pantheon. The arrangement of the deities seems to have no rhyme or reason and just seem to be placed here and there with no adherence to vedic rules regarding the placement of deities in a temple nor to any taste of interior decor. Beside the entrance, under a neem tree, is a cement sculpture of a huge 5 headed serpent on which a female goddess figure is portrayed. There seems to be a sad lack of local flavor and devotion and the whole place looks sterile and devoid of energy. However on Sundays and full moon days, this shrine is jam-packed with people because of the huge amount of free food which is cooked and distributed there to one and all !

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