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The
temple of Sri Nataraja in
chidambaram (South Arcot
district) mingles piety, tradition, history and art to a remarkable extent.
It is held in reverence by millions of Hindus not only in India but also in
Sri Lanka, where its influence is profound. Originating in times gone out of
mind, it attracted tradition and history from age to age. The art lavished
on it is supreme. It has been at the centre of Tamil spiritual life for
generations. Nataraja,
as the Lord of the Dance, is one of the great philosophical concepts of
Tamil Hinduism. The Lord is dancing on the remains of evil and ignorance so
that His worshipper is free of both. The concept gave rise to the matchless
bronzes, mainly of Cholatimes, which are now recognised at home and abroad
as one of the supreme achievements of the Hindu genius. The Deity of
Chidambaram represents one of the five great elements of nature, either, or,
in other words, the Lord without a form. Two other concepts are enshrined in
the Sri Kalahasti and the Tiruvanaikka temple (see above) as representing
wind in the former and water in the latter. The temple of Arunachalesvara in
Tiruvanna-malai (see below) stands for fire, and the Ekamranatha in
Kanchipuram for earth (see below). According
to tradition, the Chidambaram temple was built by Simhavarman, or
Hiranyavarman, a Chola, who, however, is said to have been king of Gandadesa,
or Bengal, in the fifth century A.D. He suffered from leprosy. Having heard
of the fame of Tillai, as Chidambaram was originally called after a forest
of trees of that species which stood there, he abdicated and came to the
village, passing through Kanchipuram. At the instance of Vyagrapada, one of
two saints living three, worshipping a Linga called the Mulasthana, he
bathed in a tank named Sivaganga, now within the temple, and was cured. The
saint crowned him king of the place. In gratitude he built a temple and it
brought three thousand men of sanctity and learning from north and the
descendents are called Dikshithars. Vyagrapada,
son of an ascetic, had after learning the Vedas and the sastras, come to
Thillai to perform penance. He was a Linga under a banyan tree and near a
tank. He built himself a hermitage near another tank, consecrated another
Linga, and worshipped both the Longas. Finding that the flowers he gathered
for worship were spoiled by honey bees, he prayed to the Lord for the
tiger's eyes, claws and feet. The request was granted. His name means
"one with the feet of a tiger". One day, in yogic trance, he had a
vision of the Lord's dance in a forest and longed to see it himself. He
awaited the day when the Lord would dance in Tillai. Patanjali,
a name meaning "one who had been dropped down from the palm", was
born to Anusuya, the wife of a sage. The Lord had said that Ananta, the
Serpent on who Lord Vishnu rests, would be born to her as a serpent. In this
form, Patanjali came to Tillai and joined Vyagrapada. Both worshipped their
personal deities and also One common to both, Mulanatha. After several years
on as appointed day, the Lord appeared to dance before them. Patanjali
prayed to Him that He exhibit His dance to all devotees and for all time.
The Lord agreed. According
to another tradition, Lord Siva defeated Goddess Kali in a dancing contest.
He performed the type called "Urdhva Tandava". She was asked to
reside on the northern limits of Chidambara. The devotee is enjoined to
worship Her as well as Lord Nataraja. Her temple, therefore, is of great
antiquity. The present structure was built in the thirteenth century. "Patanjali"
was a name borne by the great author on yoga. There was another who
commented on the scriptures. Whether they were two different persons and
whether they were identical with the Patanjali and Chidambaram cannot be
ascertained in our present state of knowledge. But perhaps there is a clue
in the fact that the name was considered an honoured one in South India. If
this view is accepted, there was a Nataraja temple in Tillai in the second
century B.C., the date of the Patanjali of "Mahabashya" fame, who
is said to be a contemporary of Pushyamithra Sunga. By the seventh century
A.D., the date of Appar and Sambandar, both of whom refer to it, the
Nataraja cult had been established. According
to traditions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Chengannan, the
original builder of Tiruvanaikka temple (see above), was crowned in
Chidambaram by the Tillai Dikshitars, he is said to have built mansions for
them in Tillai, "the abode of the Lord of the Dance". Since he
belonged to the sangam centuries, the temple was in existence then. Every
evidence points to its great antiquity. There
is a shrine of Lord Govindaraja adjacent to that of Lord Nataraja. In this
fact the temple is exceptional. The earliest reference to this shrine occurs
in the hymns of Tirumangai. This Alvar, a contemporary of Nandivaram II, the
Pallava king, who ruled for nearly sixty-five years in the eighth century,
says in his hymn on the Lord of Tiruchitrakulam, or Lord Govindaraja, that
the monarch made many gifts to this shrine. The Alvar states that the Tillai
Three Thousand Dikshitars worshipped Lord Govindaraja also. The sectarianism
in the temple for some time was of later growth. Another Alvar, Kulasekhara,
sings of Lord Govindaraja and says that Sri Rama stayed a while in
Tiruchtrakulam. Sri
Sankara is said to have presented the crystal Linga which is under worship
in the temple. Manikkavachagar is closely associated with the temple. His
"Tirukkovai" refers to the images of Lord Nataraja and Lord
Govindaraja in Tillai. There
is a strong tradition that a king of Sri Lanka, Sena I (822-842) came to
Chidambaram with a dumb daughter of his to witness a philosophical
disputation in the temple between Manikkavachagar and some Buddhist priests.
The saint defeated his opponents. When the king asked that his daughter be
cured of her dumbness, he made her speak. Thereupon the king turned Saiva. A
Sinhalese work, the "Niyaka Sangrahava", confirms this. On this
basis, Manikkavachagar may be dated to the first half of the ninth century. He
attained beautitude in the temple. A beautiful tradition says that Lord
Sundaresvara, of Madurai, appeared before him as an old man and requested
him, as one who had composed the "Tiruvachagam", to sing a "kovai",
a literary form. The saint then sang the "Tirukkovai", the Lord
Himself took it down, added at the end that it was in the writing of
Tiruchirrambalamudaiyan, or the Lord of Chidambaram, placed the palm leaf
manuscript n the sanctum of the temple, and disappeared. When the next
morning, the priests discovered it, they came to Manikkavachagar and asked
him to explain it. Pointing to the image of the Lord, he said that he was
the explanation and was merged in Him. Another
saint directly associated with the temple was Nandanar, the great Harijan
devotee. One of the sixty-three Nayanmars, he was, by the accident of his
birth, precluded from entering temples, though he longed to do so. The Lord
performed a miracle for him when he and his friends, came to a temple in a
village called Tiruppungur. The Nandi image which was obstructing their view
of the sanctum moved aside at His command so that they could see. One
day Nandanar heard of the Chidambaram temple. To worship the Lord there
became a consuming passion with him. He talked about it among his friends,
saying that he would go there "tomorrow". Many
"tomorrows" passed, but the Harijan still had not achieved his
object. Atlas, one day, he arrived in Chidambaram. He went round the temple
walls singing and dancing. The Lord appeared in a dream to the Dikshitars
and commanded them to admit him into the temple. He entered the sanctum and
was seen no more. He had become merged with the Lord. When
the imperial Cholas came to the throne in the ninth century, to become as
magnificent builders of, and donors to, temples as they were might warriors
at home and abroad, the Chidambaram fane had become one of reverence, but
perhaps not anything exceptional. The Cholas made it their imperial, their
own, temple. They made it the temple of temples. The
second Chola, Aditya I, gilded the Kanaka Sabha, the front part of the main
sanctum, with gold. His son, Parantaka I, completed the task. According to a
famous copper plate epigraph, the Tiruvalangadu plates issued by a successor
of his, Rajendra I, he was "a bee at the lotus feet of Purantaka",
or Siva, and he built for the silver mountain, or Kailasa, a golden house
called the Dabhra sabha. This is another name for the main sanctum.
Parantaka had an honorific, "Pon Veynda Perumal", or the king who
covered the temple with gold. A son and successor of his, Gandaraditya,
wrote a hymn on the Lord of Chidambaram, the "Tiru Isaippa". The
longest lasting achievement in the reign of Rajaraja I (985-1014) was the
recovery of the hymns of the Nayanmars (see above) He built the magnificent
Rajarajesvaram temple in his capital, Thanjavur (see below). One of the
innumerable image he enshrined there was "Adavallan", another name
of Lord Nataraja. Weights and measures also were called by the same name. Rajaraja's
son and successor, Rajendra I (1012-1044), the mightiest emperor in the
history of South India, removed his capital from Thanjavur to
Gangaikondacholapuram, some 50 km from Chidambaram (see below). In his eight
regnal year, he made a gift to scholars from a mandapa in Chidambaram. The
temple must have carried they are all lost in periodical renovations. A son
and successor of his, Virarajendra, gifted a valuable ruby, named the
Trailokya Sara, to the Lord of the Dance in the Dabhra Sabha in Chidambaram. Under
Kulottunga I (1070-1120) the Nataraja shrine was renovated. The emperor
presented to the temple a precious stone given to him as tribute by the King
of Cambodia. In his time and that of his successor, Vikrama Chola
(1118-1135), magnate of the realm, Naralokavira, made some magnificent gifts
and added many structures to the temple. The most important of his additions
is a hundred pillared mandapa, in the third prakara. He also built a hall
where Sambandar's hymns were to be sung. This is no longer in existence.
Vikrama himself used all the money he received in his tenth year as tribute
to build structures in the temple. It
was in the reign of his son, Kutottunga II (1133-1150), that the temple's
second great event, after the recovery of event, after the recovery of the
Nayanmar's hymns, took place. This was the writing and the inauguration of
the "Periya Puranam", which tells the story of the sixty-three
Nayanmars and which has become as a Veda among the Tamils. The king's
minister, Sekkizhar, found that he was much taken with a Jain work, "Jivaka
Chintamani". When he said that this was useful neither in this world
nor in the next, the king asked him to compose an elaborate work on the
lives of the Nayanmars. Sekkihar came to Chidambaram and prayed to the Lord for His grace to begin the epic. The Lord asked him to begin with the word, "Ulakelam". He took his place in the thousand-pillared hall, in the third prakara, and set to work. In all he composed 4,253 stanzas. When the king heard that the epic had been completed, he came to Chidambaram. As he was worshipping the Lord, he heard above the sound of tinkling of the Lord's anklets as He danced, His command that he should hear the poem expounded by the author himself. The exposition took a year to complete. It was held in the thousand-pillared hall. Splendid festivities were held, and Chidambaram looked like Lord Siva's world on earth. The work was covered with silk, deposited in a golden box and carried on an elephant around the main streets of the city. It was then placed before the image of the Lord. This stirring event added to the temple's lustre. The
Cholas continued to pour gifts on the temple. The last of them Rajendra III
(1246-1279), calls himself a worshipped at the divine lotus feet of Lord
Nataraja. The later Pallava, Kopperunjinga, perfactory tributary of his,
made some brilliant additions to the temple. Among
the Pandyas of the second empire who displaced the Cholas, Jatavarman
Sundara I (1251-1268), who made such splendid benefactions to the Srirangam
temple (see above), was equally munificent in Chidambaram. He gilded the
main shrine with gold and performed, as in Srirangam, the ceremony of
weighing himself against precious stones and gold, which were then given to
the temple or distributed in charity. A great successor of his, Maravarman
Vikrama, also made gifts to the temple. In
the Vijayanagar centuries there were disputes between the officiants of the
Nataraja and of the Govindaraja shrines. The great emperor, Krishnadeva,
worshipped in the temple and built additions to it. There is a stone image
of him in the north gopura, which he is said to have erected. A polymath,
Appayya Dikshita, spent his last days in Childambaram. Like
the temples in Srirangam island and in Kanchipuram (see below), this fane
was used as a fortress in the wars of the eighteenth century. The best known
incident is the British general, Sir Eyre Coote's unsuccessful attempt to
capture it from the Mysore forces which were occupying it. During this
period the images of Lord Nataraja and Goddess Sivakamasundari were in the
Thyagaraja temple in Tiruvarur. They were brought back in 1773. The
Nattukkottai Chettiars renovated the temple in 1891. It was again renovated
in 1955 and party yet again in 1972. There are many unrecorded renovations
and expansions which, over the centuries, have enlarged a small temple into
its present gigantic proportions. It
is natural that there should be differences of opinion among scholars on
some of the questions of the temple's history. But most of them would
profitably agree that the oldest surviving part of the temple is the shrine
of Tirumulanatha in the second prakara, close of the beautiful colonnaded
Sivaganga tank. In the same shrine there is an mage of Umaparvathi facing
the shrine, but outside the second prakara wall, there is a stucco image of
Nandi. Immediately south of the shrine another prakara was built in later
times when the original temple was enlarged nearly six times in area. It is
within this prakara that the shrines of Lord Nataraja and Lord Govindarajais
are
located, together with some others. There
are five "sabhas" in the temple. The Chit Sabha, or the
Chitrambalam, is the Holy of Holies. Together with the adjoining Kanaka
Sabha, it is considered as the Lord's abode. The main object of worship is
represented by the "Chidambara Chakra", popularly known as "Chidambara
Rahasyam", or the "secret of Chidambaram". It consists of a
string of the petals of a leaf, the Siva, sacred to Lord Siva, made of gold,
with a black curtain covering it. The
curtain stands for ignorance. It is lifted there times a day. The concept is
that of the Lord of the Ether, or Akasha. Nearby there are the processional
images of Lord Nataraja and Goddess Sivakamasundari, the crystal Linga
presented by Sri Sankara, an emerald image of the Lord named Ratna Sabapathi,
and images of Svarna Bhairava and Kalyanasundra. Five steps lead from the
Kanaka Sabha to the Chit Sabha. They are considered symbolic of the sacred
Panchakshara, the five syllables, "na", "ma", "si",
"va", and "ya". To the east of the two "sabhas"
there is a shrine dedicated to Brahma and Chandikesvara. All around there is
an impressive colonnade in two storeys. These
two "sabhas" face south. A few metres away there is the shrine of
Lord Gvindaraja, facing east. Immediately to its south there is the entrance
to the second prakara, and beyond it the flagstaff. There are four important
structures in the second prakara. At the southwest corner there is the
shrine of Pundarikavalli Thayar, the Consort of Lord Givindaraja. To
its east there is a marvellous structure, the Nritta Sabha, or the Hall of
the Dance. It is in the form of a chariot drawn by horses. It houses an
image of the Lord as He was engaged in the contest with Goddess Kali (see
above). It could have been built in the eleventh century. The Tirumulanatha
shrine is in the northern part of the prakara. In the eastern there is the
fourth of the "sabhas", the Deva. It is here that the processional
images are kept, and also where the Dikshutars holds their periodical
meetings. The
third prakara is spacious. It contains two leading shrines and two
magnificent, huge mandapas. There is also the lovely Sivaganga tank. The
shrine of Goddess Sivakamasundarai is so big that it is a minor temple by
itself. The shrine and the ardhamandapa are enclosed by a prakara. All
around the base of the enclosing walls are lovely friezes of dancers,
musicians and drummers. There is also a mukhamandapa, and on its ceiling
there are paintings, originally added in Nayak times. There is a tradition
that the Goddess is looking at the Lord, enshrined as an underground Linga
in the Sivaganga tank nearby, through a window in the western wall of the
tank. The
shrine of Lord Subramania is notable for the face that its mukhamandapa is
in the form of a chariot, like the Nritta Sabha in the second enclosure.
From the fact that the shrine is called Pandya Nayakam, it can be deduced
that it was erected by a Pandaya, but who exactly he was it is impossible to
say in our present state of knowledge. Contiguous
to these two shrines stands the hundred pillared mandapa. It is not only of
artistic beauty but also of historical century a Pandya celebrated the
"anointment of the hero and the victor" here. In later times some
of the temple festivals were celebrated here. It is a long hall, about 48.8m
long from east to west, and 30.4m broad north to south. On the base there is
a frieze of yalis all around A few traces of painting survive on the
ceiling. The hall contains four types of pillars. The
thousand-pillared mandapa in the northern part of the prakara is the fifth
of the "sabhas", the Raja. It has seen much history. Some of the
Cholas were crowned here, and it was, as already related (see above), the
venue of the exposition by Sekkizhar of his "Periya Puranam". It
too is in the form of a chariot. At the entrance there are two magnificent
elephants, and on the basement there is a long frieze of dancing figures. The
four gopuras of the temple, in the cardinal directions, are among the most
magnificent of their kind. Each a gigantic masterpiece, is of seven storeys.
The oldest is the western one, begun and completed in the twelfth century by
two Chola kings. There are sculptures in the niches of the first tier with
labels. The beginnings of the north gopura date to the same century. The
Vijayanagar Rayas, Krishnadeva and Achyutha, could have completed it in the
sixteenth. The
east gopura also was commenced in the twelfth century. The superstructure
was built in the thirteenth and then renovated in the eighteenth by the
mother-in-law of Pachaiyappa Mudaliar, a renowned philanthropist. Portraits
of these two are to be found here. In this gopura and in the western one, on
either side of the gateways, there are representation of the 108 poses of
the dance described in the ancient classic, Bharatha's "Natya Sastra".
The south gopura arose in the thirteenth century. The Pandyan crest of the
double carp appears here. But this is no proof that the Pandyas built it. Beyond
the third prakara wall on which all the four gopuras are set, approximately
at the centre of each rampart, there extends a garden surrounded by a fourth
wall. There was a ditch outside this wall. It has now been filled up. The
temple of Brahmapurisvara in Shiyazhi, twenty kilometres from Chidambaram,
is associated with the life and ministry of Sambandar. It has been sung of
by the four leading Nayanmars. Forty
kilometres farther away, on the seacoast, is the site of Kaveripattinam, the
historic poet city of the early Cholas. It figures in many Sangam classics.
Excavations confirm what some foreign geographers have said that it was
leading port through which the Roman empire, in the first centuries of the
Christian era, traded with India. There was a colony of foreign merchants
here. Nearabout
Kaveripattinam, of Pumpuhar, as it is also called, there are many ancient
temples; Tiruvengadu, Nangur, Melapperumballam, Sayakkadu, Pallavanevaram.
Some of these contain superb bronzes, a few recovered from the sea.
According to tradition, the sea has swallowed up some parts of the old royal
capital. |
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