In
Jab We Met, Shahid and Kareena discuss the fear of missing a train and running on the platform to catch it. My phobia is just opposite of it. I always fear that I will miss my station and sleep off on the train. That's why I prefer bus than trains. Even then, there was one incident when I slept off in a bus and got down in Kovilpatti instead of Virudunagar. But I will tell you about that in an another blog post.
It was the weekend of Republic day. Usually, my inner GPS works perfectly for bus trips. That day also, I woke up just when the cleaner boy shouted 'Kanchipuram' on a pitch that was not too loud to wake all the passengers but enough to wake those who should get down there. I used to wear contact lenses those days. And when I travel I wore them through day and night. When I wake up with those lenses, it takes a couple of minutes for the lenses to adjust from the dry state to normal. Even before I have those two minutes of eye adjustment, an auto driver rushed to me and asked where I wanted to go.
It was an early morning but still dark. I noticed that I wasn't standing on a bus stand. So I told him, brother, give me a minute, let me first check where I am standing. I took my mobile out, opened Google Maps and found out that I was standing on the by-pass road and need to get inside the city. There were only two autos there and thankfully only a few passengers got down. My friends had messaged me in the Whatsapp group(we create a separate group for each trip even though mostly it will have only the three of us!) that they have already reached (that's a first!) and took a room in Shri Moushiga Hotels.
When I reached the hotel, Sathya and Adhi were already there from Bengaluru on Sathya's bike. The other bike is coming from Chennai with Santhosh who is a wildcard entry on this trip.
Before starting the trip, let's know about at Kanchipuram first. It is one of the ancient cities in India. The reference to this city can be found in Patanjali's Mahabhasya. It is mentioned in Mahabaratha that Kanchi was supporting Gouravas in the final war. According to Wikipedia, The earliest inscription from the Maurya period (325–185 BCE) denote the city as Kanchipuram, where King Visnugopa was defeated by Samudragupta Maurya (320–298 BCE).
It was the capital for Early Cholas and later to the Pallavas. The great poet Kalidasa had praised this city as 'Nagareshu Kanchi' which means 'the best among cities'.
The whole city can be divided into three parts; Siva Kanchi, Vishnu Kanchi and Jaina Kanchi. It is said that there are thousand temples in this city. But in this trip, we tried to cover only a few temples in Siva and Vishnu Kanchi.
Kanchi Kailasanathar Temple
Sice we had a lot to cover for the day, we decided to see the Kailasanathar temple first and then have our breakfast. But unfortunately, when we reached the kailasanathar temple, it wasn't opened yet. Due to our time constraint, we just looked around the outer prakaram and moved on to the next temple.
Even though our early kings had built many temples with bricks, it was Pallavas who started building temples with stones in the early period(in southern India I believe). The two important temples that show the grandness and architecture intelligence of Pallavas are Mahabalipuram shore temple and Kanchi Kailasanathar temple.
The king Narasimmavarman II built this temple around 700 AD. Since he was also called as 'Rajasimman', this temple also got the name 'Rajasimmecharam'. The temple is built using sandstone.
When the Chalukya defeated the Pallavas, the Chalukya king Vikramathithya II took the Pallava sculptors to his kingdom and the queen Lokhamadevi built the Virupaksha Temple in Pattadakal to commemorate the king's victory. So these two temples have some resemblance.
Varadharaja Perumal Temple
After finishing our breakfast, we moved to Vishnu Kanchi. Kanchi Varadharaja Perumal temple is very important to Vaishnavaites next to Srirangam and Thirupathi. It is believed that it was a cave temple during the period of Pallavas and later expanded by Cholas in 1053 AD. The Vijayanagara Empire also built the East Gopuram, Oonjal Mandapam, and Kalyana Mandapam.
The Kalyana mandapam has 96 pillars-each are made of single stone and a small mandapam with four pillars inside. So totally it has 100 pillars.
Since it is a very old temple, many mythological stories are said about the temple and the gold and silver lizards in it. One of those is, once sage Gautama cursed his disciples to turn into lizards since they were careless and there was a lizard in the water they brought for him to do pooja. It is believed that they lived in this temple and got relieved of their curse by Vishnu.
 |
| Yes.. I'm the one who is explaining :) |
Apart from the main stone idol, the temple also has wooden idol which is made out of Athi tree and kept inside the temple tank in a silver box. For every 40 years, it is taken out and kept inside the temple for a month and poojas are done for it.
Ekambareswarar Temple
Our next stop was Thirukachi Ekambaram alias Ekambareswarar temple. It is one of the pancha bootha sthalam and particularly signifies Earth. This temple was also initially built by Pallavas and later expanded by Cholas and the Vijayanagara Kingdom.
The lord here has a beautiful Tamil name called 'Thazhuva Kuzhainathar', which means 'he who melted in her embrace'. The legend says that Parvati created a lingam out of sand in the river bank of Vegavathi and worshipped Shiva under a mango tree. To test her, Lord Shiva made the river to overflow. To save the lingam from the flood, Parvati hugged the lingam tightly. Due to this embrace, the lingam melted and got its present form.
Since the Lingam was under a mango tree, it also got its present name 'Ekambaram', which came from 'amram' to 'ambaram' and finally into 'ekambaram'. The sthala virutcham here is Mango tree and it is believed to be 3500 years old. It is also believed that it can yield four type of mangoes from its four branches. In the recent years, they have revived the tree using tissue culture method with the help of agriculture department.
It is also known as the place, where Sundarar got his left eyesight back. Please remember this name, since we will see his name in many places on this trip. I will explain his full story when the time comes.
 |
| The mango tree.. |
The other two temples we planned to visit in Kanchipuram were Kanchi Kamatchi amman temple and Vaikunta Perumal temple. But the line in the Kamatchi amman temple was really long and the Vaikunta Perumal temple was not opened that morning due to the sudden demise of an old person residing near to the temple.
Since we had a lot to cover on that day, we vacated our room on noon and started our bike trip towards our next destination, Mamandur.
