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| Kallazhagar temple, near Madurai |
As all my friends know by now that we go to Trichy to visit our family deity once every year. This time after visiting our Gunaseelam temple, we went to Madurai and from there to Kallazhagar Kovil, which is situated 21 Km. from Madurai. I will write about Madurai Meenakshi temple later. I was more fascinated by this temple and the Noopura Gangai hill.
Actually, my husband wanted to visit Thirupparangundram and Pazhamudircholai. We visited Thiruppangundram on our way to Madurai and this time we visited Kallazhagar Kovil, Pazhamudircholai and Noopura gangai which is near the Pazhamudircholai temple. Kallazhagar temple is situated at the foothills of a range of hills called Azhagar malai. Pazhamudir cholai is situated at a higher level, around 4 Km. uphill from here. Noopura Gangai comes next.
The deity is Vishnu and he is called as Paramaswamy here. The processional golden deity is called 'Kallazhagar' (Sundararajan also). 'Kallar' means 'thief' and 'azhagar' means 'a beautiful person'! He steals the hearts of his devotees by blessing them, it seems! This is quite a huge, ancient temple built by the Pandya Kings/Nayakkar kings and patronised by Krishna Deva Raya. The temple has got Dravidian type gopuram with beautiful sculptures. During Chaitra month's utsav, the processional golden deity (Utsava moorthy) is taken to Madurai for the celestial wedding of Shiva and Parvathi (Sundareshwarar and Meenakshi). As per our mythology, Vishnu is the brother of Meenakshi. She is married to Shiva. Vishnu hands over his sister's hand to Shiva here! Read more about it
here. (Vaishnavites, followers of Vishnu and Shaivaites, followers of Shiva, worship these gods together, here, for once!). I was fascinated by the Karuppanna samy temple which stands in front of the Kallazhagar temple! It has got 18 steps and nobody dares to lie in front of the deity! Karuppanna samy is supposed to be the village deity. It is quite huge. We have to enter Kallazhagar temple via this temple! It was a Sunday and some 3 local weddings were going on! This temple is famous for its sculptures. We didn't have much time to spend here...hopefully, I will take more pictures and post again!
We noticed a closed, huge door inside which Vishnu's Chakra is kept it seems and the door opens only once a year. Different stories are told about this temple.
We had the famous 'kallazhagar kovil dosa'...this is famous like our Tirupati laddoo! I noticed coarse rice powder, pepper, curry leaves and coconut as ingredients in this dosa. They fry it in ghee, it seems, though I doubt it! It was dripping with oil, but the taste was good.
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| Noopura Gangai |
Then we went up to Noopura Gangai. It is said that when Brahma poured water from his kamandal on Vishnu's feet, the water fell on earth and they became rivers like Ganga in the north India and the water which fell down via his anklet fell on this hill and is called Noopura Gangai(salangai aaru...anklet river!). The water is full of medicinal values and taking bath here cures many ailments, it is said. Nobody knows where the water originates from. The bathing area was very crowded. People tonsure the hair of their babies and bathe here. Another deity, called Rakkaayi also is here which is famous for the local people. Actually, the water comes out from her Garbagruha - sanctum sanctorum. We collected some water in a bottle and sprinkled on our heads! The water didn't have any smell, though!
Before going up the steps to the above temple, we parked our car in a flat surface. When we went there it was around 7 am. Some sound hit our ears as soon as we stepped out of the car. The crowd was less then and so this sound was too loud. And then I saw this scene:
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| The dots hanging down the trees look like weaver bird nests, are they? Click on the picture to view clearly. |
This area is full of trees. This is sort of a 'herbal forest'. Famous for Bisons, it seems. But this is new. We had seen weaver bird nests at Aathoor and wrote about it
here.
The nests were two layered there. Here, they look like single nests. They are called pendant nests, my son said. Since somebody said that it is better to visit Noopura Gangai as early as possible since it was a Sunday to avoid crowds, I didn't take a video of the sound before going up but when I came down, the area was full of vehicles. It was difficult to make out the sound of the birds. So, more photos:
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| This is the place where we parked our car. You can see the trees in the background. |
The next temple was Pazhamudir Cholai. This is the sixth abode of Lord Muruga (Subrahmanya). The six abodes are called 'Arupadai veedu'! The deity Muruga is with his two wives, Valli and Deivayaanai here. The temple is small. I have seen other Murugan temples and all were huge temples.
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| Pazhamudir cholai temple. |
This temple and the whole area is full of beautiful monkeys. More than me, my husband clicked more photos here...our ancestors, it seems!
I think I will write more later about this trip.
Ooh...how many 'it seems' are there!
Gopuram pictures: Thank you, Google!
