Chidambaram Heritage Experience - Sept 2022

Travelogue and photos courtesy of Thiru Sriram Hari Lakshminarayanan

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Chidambaram - The story of Vyaghrapada Madhyanthineeswarar - மத்யந்தினீஸ்வரம்.

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Last week we traveled with Sri Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan to Chidambaram and experienced through him the beginnings of the temple and town. Like Sri Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan says, understanding the history of Chidambaram is understanding the temple itself. At the end of our two day trip organized by RATHAM, the result of this well planned itinerary was the intensity with which we could relate to the Lord at the Ponnambalam.

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Our first temple on the circuit was Madhyanthineeswarar. What Amarkantak is for the Narmada river, Madhyanthineeswarar is (also) for the Chidambaram temple.

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Madhyanthini was a maharishi engaged in devotion and prayer to Shiva and desired a child who could put more love into Shiva than he could. Soon he had a son who excelled at the study of Vedas and Sastras. He had a burning desire for "Atma Gyana" and when he queried his father for the means to it, he was told by his father Madhyanthini to pray to the "அனாதி" Lord (without beginning or end) at the Thillai forest which was called as the "center of earth". (Thillai is the stage for Shiva's cosmic dance). He desired to pray to his lord with flowers that were not touched by bees and insects. To achieve this he tried going to the flower garden before dawn ahead of the bees and realized he couldn't do much with his human vision. So he prayed to Shiva for night vision and claws like a Tiger to enable to climb slippery trees and see and pluck bilva leaves and flowers in the dark. The Karunamurthy that Shiva is soon granted his wish and thus Vyaghrapadar came to be. "vyaghra" in Sanskrit is tiger, "pada" is foot. Vyaghrapada is depicted as having tiger legs and eyes in hands and feet. As we go from temple to temple we will see how Vyaghrapada waited to see the Ananda-tandava.

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There is a pond in front of the temple called "pulimadu" புலிமடு. The temple at a point in time would have been inside a thick forest. It is sad to see it sandwiched between concrete homes that have clearly encroached upon the temple space.