2017 Navaratri Tiruvannamalai Festival Pictorial Report Links

Below are listed the photo galleries of the 2017 Navaratri Tiruvannamalai Pictorial Report. Click the link at each section to view that particular gallery.

2017 Kolu Display at Yogi Ramsuratkumar Ashram

2017 Kolu Display at a Tiruvanamalai Home

2017 Navaratri Alangarams Days 1, 2, 3

2017 Navaratri Alangarams Days 5, 6

2017 Navaratri Alangarams Days 7, 8, 9

A Walk Through Tiruvannamalai

I recently had to visit Ayyankulam Street in the heart of Tiruvannamalai, and after completing my work decided to walk back randomly through the side streets on my way to my planned visit to the Kamakshi Temple on North Street. 

The walk took in side streets, and vegetable markets, the fascinating Kumaran Kovil Temple (of which I will write about at a later date), and also lots and lots of bullocks pulling their various loads through the narrow streets of old Tiruvannamalai. 

Bullocks, happily with empty cart

Selling their vegetables

Market Streets of Tiruvannamalai

Mum sending her son for shopping

Produce on display

Small little side streets

Distant view of a Big Temple Gopuram

Bullocks having to pull far too heavy loads

Ladies cleaning bags of ground nuts

Bags and bags of onions

Piles of Coconuts

Two nice boys having a well deserved rest

Kumaran Kovil Temple

Arunachala Samudra Update

To those interested in reading about the recent Adi Annamalai Mahakumbhabhishekam please visit my website Arunachala Samudra at the section on Adi Annamalai Temple.  

Over the last month a number of new narratives have been added to the website, in the Temple Section, narratives and photographs on Adi Annamalai Temple, Rajarajeshwari Temple, Pachaiamman Temple and the Asta Lingams. 

There are also in depth narratives in the Festival Section, on the Thiruvoodal and Mahashivaratri Festivals. 

For morality tales, anecdotes and quotes go to this link here.

I will be continuing to upload new material on Arunachala Samudra over the coming months, so please continue checking in. 

Temples in Tamil Nadu

An article entitled, "For the record, TN temples bigger" appeared in National papers throughout India. The following narrative is taken from 'Hindustan Times, Friday, December 28, 2007':-

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"Have officials of the Guinness Book of Records committed a blunder by declaring Delhi’s Akshardham Temple as the largest Hindu temple complex in the world? It appears so. Officials of the famous Meenakshi Temple in Madurai maintain that Delhi's Akshardham is smaller than at least three different temple complexes in Tamil Nadu alone.

Meenakshi Temple

“Even if one considers the measurements of the Akshardham Temple given by the Guinness officials, Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple and the Arunachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai are definitely larger temple complexes,” said B Raja, joint commissioner of the Meenakshi Temple.

He pointed out that the outermost wall of the Meenakshi Temple is 850 ft long and 800 ft wide. The total area of the complex is 17 acres or 7.40 lakh sq ft. This is much larger than Akshardham which, press reports have indicated, is only 356 ft long and 316 ft wide, its grounds covering merely 86,342 sq ft.

Akshardham Temple

When informed that the entire Akshardham complex was spread over 30 acres, Raja said, "A temple is a place for prayer. It is incorrect to include facilities for non-religious activities such as restaurants or boating arrangements as the Akshardham complex has, as part of a temple, just because they happen to be in the vicinity."

Raja also noted that the Tiruvannamalai Temple dedicated to Lord Siva is even larger — at 25 acres or 10.89 lakh sq ft — than the Meenakshi Temple. “However, the built-up area in Madurai covers a wider area than Thiruvannamalai,” he said. Also the main tower at Tiruvannamali is 217 ft high.

Tiruvannamalai Temple

Even these two temple complexes are dwarfed in size when one takes into account the massive Sri Ranganthaswamy Temple complex in Srirangam near Tiruchy, a noted historian pointed out.

“Srirangam, surrounded by the waters of river Kaveri, is a 600-acre island-town enclosed within the seven walls of the gigantic Sri Ranganathaswami Temple. There are 21 gopurams, among which the Rajagopuram is the tallest in South India — it is 72 metres (about 220 ft) in height, and dates to the 17th century, although it was fully completed in 1987. The temple complex measures 950 metres by 816 metres (about half a square mile) along its outer perimeter,“ writes Prof VS Seshadri.

Sri Ranganthaswamy Temple

"But we are curious to know if their officials visited our large temples like Srirangam, Madurai Meenakshi, Thiruvannamalai and Thiruvarur temples before arriving at this verdict," said a senior official of the Temple Administration Department.

State Temple Administration officials, however, said they have no immediate plan to challenge the Guinness classification of Akshardham."

Dalits in Temple

The following report is about Dalits gaining entry into a Temple in Tiruvannamalai District. Seems difficult to believe that this is truly the year 2007!

Express News Service
Tiruvannamalai, Oct 4:

The Thirugnaneeshwarar Temple in Thamaraipakkam Village here was forcibly rid of its age-old practice of denying entry to the so-called ‘untouchables’ when, on Thursday, a group of Dalits from the village successfully entered the Shiva Temple and offered prayers.

According to people of the village, the Temple, situated on the banks of the Cheyyar River, is more than 1,000 years old. The Dalit population of the village has been denied entry to the Temple since time immemorial. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had even taken up the issue and represented it to the officials concerned for remedy. In fact, the party had also decided to enter the Temple along with Dalits on Thursday if caste Hindus of the Village stuck to their stand of not allowing them into the Temple.

Sivakumar, District President of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural Labourers’ Association, who was among those who participated in the Temple entry said, “I first came across the Dalit issues when, sometime ago, I saw in a small hotel in the village idlis being packed in bare newspaper without using a plastic sheet or banana left for Dalit customers alone. Later, I came to know about the discrimination in the Temple”.

After gaining entry in the to the Temple, the agitating Dalits went to one of the tea shops where the ‘two-tumbler’ system was allegedly in practice. The shopkeeper broke the tradition and served them tea in the same type of cups used for other people in the village.

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In the Indian caste system, a Dalit, often called an untouchable, or an outcaste, is a person who according to traditional Hindu belief does not have any "Varnas". Varna refers to the Hindu belief that most humans were supposedly created from different parts of the body of the divinity Purusha. The part from which a varna was supposedly created defines a person's social status with regards to issues such as who they can marry and which professions they could hold. Dalits fall outside the varna system and have historically been prevented from doing any but the most menial jobs. (However, a distinction must be made between lower-cast people and Pariahs.) Included are leather-workers (called chamar), poor farmers and landless labourers, night soil scavengers (called bhangi or chura), street handicrafters, folk artists, street cleaners, dhobis etc. Traditionally, they were treated as pariahs in South Asian society and isolated in their own communities, to the point that even their shadows were avoided by the upper castes.

Discrimination against Dalits still exists in rural areas in the private sphere, in ritual matters such as access to eating places and water sources. It has largely disappeared, however, in urban areas and in the public sphere, in rights of movement and access to schools. The earliest rejection of discrimination, at least in spiritual matters, was made as far back as the Bhagavad Gita, which says that no person, no matter what, is barred from enlightenment.

To read more of this information on Dalits please click here.

Hill Structures

The latest poll on Arunachala Grace Blog asked the question 'What construction should be allowed on Arunachala?' From the response 56% believe that there should be absolutely no construction on the Hill, 32% polled responded that Temples and Shrines should be allowed with a further 9% believing that it was also acceptable to have Ashrams on Arunachala Hill. 24% respondents polled answered that illegal structures and encroachments should be demolished.