Marundeeswarar: The Lord of Medicine in a Chennai Suburb

The katha here concerns Agastya, and he is one of the most consequential figures in the tradition of the south.

The story at this temple:

• Agastya came to Shiva here seeking knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants
• Shiva taught him which herbs act on which condition
• The deity accordingly became Marundeeswarar, the lord of medicine
• Devotees have come here since for relief from illness

Who Agastya is. He is a sage of very wide reach and it is worth setting out what is attributed to him.

• He is the sage who came south, and in the tradition he is the figure through whom Vedic learning entered the Tamil country
• The Vindhya story has the mountain growing to block the sun, and Agastya asking it to bow while he crossed and remain so until he returned, which he never did
• He is credited with the Agattiyam, held to be the earliest Tamil grammar, now lost
• He is regarded as the first of the Siddhars and the founding figure of Siddha medicine
• He appears in the Ramayana, giving Rama weapons in the forest
• He is one of the Saptarishi in some listings

What that combination represents. Agastya is the figure through whom the tradition explains the arrival of a whole culture in the south, and the fact that he is credited with grammar, medicine and Vedic learning together is the point.

He is not a specialist. He is the person who brought the entire package, and every field that wanted to claim antiquity in the Tamil country claimed him.

Why medicine attaches to him specifically. Siddha medicine is the traditional medical system most strongly associated with Tamil Nadu, and its texts are in Tamil.

A system that is Tamil in language and content needs a founder who belongs to both worlds, and Agastya, a northern sage who came south and wrote in Tamil, is exactly that figure.

The relationship between temples and traditional medicine is worth understanding, and it needs stating carefully.

What Siddha is:

• A traditional medical system associated principally with Tamil Nadu, with its literature in Tamil
• Attributed to the Siddhars, a group of figures usually counted as eighteen, with Agastya at their head
• It uses plant, mineral and metallic preparations, and has its own theory of the body based on the three humours and on the five elements
• It is recognised in India under the AYUSH system alongside Ayurveda, Unani, Yoga, Naturopathy and Homoeopathy, with government colleges and registered practitioners

How temples and medicine were connected historically:

• Temples were the institutions that held land, revenue and staff in a locality, and many maintained facilities that would now be described as medical
• Chola inscriptions record temples with hospitals attached, listing physicians, surgeons, nurses, medicines and the beds provided
• Herbal knowledge was held by lineages that were often attached to temple establishments
• A shrine associated with healing would attract the sick, and where the sick gather, medical practice follows

So a temple named for medicine is not a metaphor. It sits in a tradition where the same institution often did both.

What needs saying clearly. People come to Marundeeswarar because someone in the family is ill, and it would be irresponsible to write about that without being direct.

• Serious illness needs modern medical diagnosis and treatment. Delay in getting a diagnosis costs outcomes, and for many conditions it costs lives
• If you are using a traditional system alongside, tell your doctor what you are taking. Some traditional preparations interact with prescribed drugs, and some metallic preparations require proper qualification to prepare and prescribe
• Buy such preparations only from registered practitioners and licensed manufacturers. Unregulated products have caused documented harm
• A temple visit is not a treatment, and nothing in this tradition claims it replaces one

What a temple like this actually offers a family with someone ill is something else, and it is not nothing. It gives them a place to go, an act to perform and a way to hold hope, at a time when the medical process consists largely of waiting.

The town takes its name from a sage, and the association is worth setting out.

Thiruvanmiyur is generally derived from Thiru Valmiki Ur, the sacred town of Valmiki, and the temple has a shrine associated with him.

Who Valmiki is:

• The author of the Ramayana, the earliest of the two great Sanskrit epics
• Called the Adi Kavi, the first poet
• The tradition holds that he was a highway robber before his transformation, encountered by sages who set him to repeat a mantra, and that he remained in meditation so long that an anthill grew over him, from which he takes his name, since valmika means anthill
• In the Ramayana itself, he shelters Sita after her exile from Ayodhya, and her sons Lava and Kusha are raised at his ashram and learn the epic from him

The origin of the shloka. The tradition's account of how poetry itself began is attached to Valmiki and is worth telling.

• He saw a hunter shoot one of a pair of krauncha birds, and the surviving bird cried out
• Overcome, he spoke a curse at the hunter, and found that it had come out in metre, in a form he had not intended
• That utterance is held to be the first shloka, and the word for grief, shoka, is played against shloka in the tradition's own account
• Brahma then instructed him to compose the Ramayana in that metre

What that story says. It places the origin of Sanskrit poetry in an involuntary cry of pity at the killing of a bird.

That is a remarkable thing for a literary tradition to claim about itself. It says poetry begins not in craft, not in praise and not in inspiration in the ordinary sense, but in someone being unable to bear what they have just seen.

A town named after that poet, with a temple where a sage was taught how to heal, is a reasonable pair of associations for one small stretch of coast to carry.

Chennai presents itself as a modern city, and its temple geography tells a different story that is worth following.

What the city actually sits on:

• Mylapore, with the Kapaleeshwarar temple, is far older than Madras and was a significant settlement and port
• Thiruvottiyur, to the north, has an ancient Shiva temple with a long Shaiva tradition
• Thiruvanmiyur, to the south, has this temple
• Triplicane has the Parthasarathy temple, a Divya Desam
• All of these existed before the East India Company built Fort St George in 1639, and the city grew up between and around them

What that means. Madras was not founded on empty ground. It was founded in the gaps between existing settlements, each with its own temple, and those temples are still where they were.

How the city grew around them:

• The colonial city developed around the fort and along the north south axis
• The old settlements were absorbed as neighbourhoods, keeping their names and their temples
• Twentieth century expansion, and then the IT corridor along the Old Mahabalipuram Road, filled in everything between
• Thiruvanmiyur today is a dense residential and commercial suburb near the start of that corridor

What it feels like to visit. You turn off a road with software offices and apartment towers, and there is a Chola period temple with an inscription on its wall recording a gift of lamps.

That contrast is the ordinary condition of Indian cities and is worth noticing rather than romanticising. The temple is not a survival from another world. It is a working institution in this one, used by the people who live in those apartments, and its car park is full of two wheelers.

The coast. Thiruvanmiyur beach is a short walk away, and the coastline running south from here goes to Mahabalipuram, about fifty kilometres down, which has the great Pallava rock cut monuments and is one of the essential sites in Indian art.

A visitor with a day can do Marundeeswarar, the beach, and Mahabalipuram, which covers rather a lot of the Tamil coast's history in one drive.

Getting there

• Thiruvanmiyur, south Chennai, Tamil Nadu, a short distance inland from the beach
• Thiruvanmiyur has an MRTS station, and the temple is a short distance from it
• Buses and autos serve the area from across the city
• Chennai airport is roughly 20 km, and Chennai Central and Egmore are the main railway stations

Timings

• Open in morning and evening sessions with a midday closure, as is standard for Tamil temples. Check locally
• Mondays and Pradosham days are busier, as at Shiva temples generally

When to go

• November to February for the most comfortable weather. Chennai is hot and humid from March, and April to June is severe
• Mahashivratri, the temple's principal occasion
• Pradosham, twice a month, which draws Shiva devotees across the city
• Early morning, both for the temperature and for a quieter temple

Practical notes

• Dress conservatively. Men may be expected to remove upper garments in the sanctum area at some Tamil temples, so check
• Leave footwear at the counters
• Photography inside is restricted
• The area is congested. Public transport is easier than driving
• Carry water. Chennai humidity is punishing outside the winter months

Look for the inscriptions. Chola period inscriptions on the walls record gifts to the temple. You will not be able to read them without Tamil and some epigraphic training, but knowing what they are changes how you look at a wall.

Combining the visit

• Thiruvanmiyur beach, a short walk
• Ashtalakshmi temple at Besant Nagar, on the shore, a modern temple of unusual design
• Kapaleeshwarar at Mylapore, the city's most famous temple, with the Mylapore tank and the surrounding streets
• Parthasarathy at Triplicane
• Mahabalipuram, about 50 km south along the coast road, which should be a full day of its own

A closing thought. There is a particular kind of visitor at a temple like this, and you will see them if you look. Somebody has come alone, on a weekday morning, before work, because a scan is due or a parent is in hospital. They will be there for four minutes and then leave. The temple is open at that hour for exactly that reason.