The Trichy-V.Koil-Guruvayoor Trip 14.02.09 Part 2

The Rockfort temple in Trichy is an architectural marvel. Note the single stone elephant carving right at the entrance in the second picture from below.

The purpose of our trip was to give a Vaazhai Thaar to Thaayumaanaswamy. It is a very popular tradition prevalent in this area – to give a Vaazhai Thaar (see picture) to the Lord for having a smooth child birth, after all, the Lord himself is said to have come as a mid-wife and seen through the child birth of a Bhakthimaan. The Vaazhai Thaars would be lined up in the shops as shown in the picture below and would be delivered at the Lord’s sannadhi. After dedicating it to the lord, the bananas would be distributed to the people who come to the temple.

We ordered a Thar and proceeded to look at the Maanicka Vinaayagar at the base of Rockfort. The Vimanam of the pilliyar has recently been adorned with gold (see picture). I love this. Temples have to be rich. The more the people in the vicinity take care of the temple, the more prosperous the entire vicinity would be.

There are lot of places like the picture above (see the 4th pic from below) where the Rocks of the hill seems to merge with the walls.

The Thaayumaanaswamy temple itself is in three tiers. At the first tier, there is a huge Nandi along with Navagrahas. Pillaiyar and Murugan at each side give way to a small flight of stairs which leads to the second tier where the Nattuvar Kuzhalammai ambal sannadhi is present. Right above the stairs, there was a Shree Chakram. A research paper was submitted by Shri C S Rao says that given the mathematical constrains for drawing up the Shri yantra, it is impossible to draw a “perfect” Shri Yantra. I wanted to take a picture of the yantra and try to spot the imperfectness. However, just as I focused my camera on it, a gurukkal shouted in broken English (I don’t know why actually shouted in English, I was wearing a veshti and had my usual Vibhuthi Pattai!!!) “No pictures inside the temple, only outside”. The ambal looks beautiful and one look at the ambal made me feel that there was great Saannidhyam in that place.

Thaayumaanaswami resides in the third tier of the temple and Ambal’s Vimanam could be seen from the third tier as shown in the picture. You can also see the uchchi pilliyar temple in the background.

Thaayumaanaswami’s Linga Vadivam is also breathtaking. Usual lingams are highly proportionate – the distance from the base of the aavudai till the base of the lingam is the same as the height of the lingam, which, in turn, would be the same distance from the extended arm of the lingam from where the abhisheka jalam would fall off from the aavudai. Here the total height from the base seemed to be about 9 to 10 feet high and proportion of the distance between the aavudai and the lingam seemed to be 30:60 or 35:65. Being a Swayambu lingam, the proportions of Aagama Shastram do not matter – Lord has just manifested that way for reasons he alone knows. Once again, looking at the lingam, I could immediately feel the Saannidhyam. Coming back to the temple architecture, I really wonder how the temple was built. Each tier seems to be about 16-18 feet high and ably supported by beautiful pillars. The pillars seem to be slightly different from the ones that you typically see in south Indian temples. While it is easy for the rocks of the Rockfort to bear the weight of the pillars and beams, I guess it would have been extremely difficult to make holes in the rocks and erect such tall pillars.