Sarangapani: A Sanctum Built as a Chariot

The sanctum's form is the temple's defining feature, and it follows directly from the katha.

The story:

• Hemarishi performed austerities desiring that Lakshmi be born as his daughter
• She was born from the Potramarai tank as Komalavalli
• Vishnu descended from Vaikuntha in a chariot to marry her
• The chariot came down at this spot, and the sanctum is built as that chariot

What that produces architecturally:

• The sanctum is a ratha, a chariot, with carved wheels on its sides
• Horses and elephants are carved as though drawing it
• The whole structure reads as a vehicle that has arrived and stopped

Why this is more interesting than a decorative flourish. Indian temple architecture is full of the idea that a temple is a vehicle or a mountain or a body, and here one of those metaphors has been built out completely rather than gestured at.

The chariot sanctum makes a specific theological point:

• Vishnu is not permanently resident here in the way a deity of a place is. He came, for a reason, and the reason was a marriage
• A vehicle implies movement, and a movement implies that the deity was somewhere else and chose to be here
• The building is therefore a record of an arrival, not a house

Other temples with chariot forms. The most famous is Konark in Odisha, where the entire temple is a chariot of the sun god with twelve pairs of wheels. Melukote and other sites have chariot elements, and Hampi has the well known stone chariot in the Vittala temple.

What is unusual at Sarangapani is that the chariot form is applied to the sanctum itself, the innermost and most conservative part of a temple, where departures from convention are least common.

The second unusual feature is the arrangement of the entrances, and it is a genuinely elegant piece of thinking.

What happens:

• The sanctum has two doors, one to the north and one to the south
• They are used in alternate halves of the year
• The northern door is used during Uttarayana, the period when the sun moves northward
• The southern door is used during Dakshinayana, when it moves southward
• The unused door is closed for that half of the year

What Uttarayana and Dakshinayana are:

• The sun's apparent path shifts north and south through the year, and the two halves are named for the direction of that movement
• Uttarayana runs from around mid January, marked by Makar Sankranti, to around mid July
• Dakshinayana runs from around mid July, marked by Karka Sankranti, back to mid January
• The tradition treats Uttarayana as the more auspicious half, and a great deal of ritual scheduling follows from it
• Bhishma in the Mahabharata is said to have held off his own death, lying on the bed of arrows, until Uttarayana began

Why building it into a temple is remarkable. Indian temples align with the sun in many ways, most famously where a shaft of light reaches the deity on specific days.

Sarangapani goes further. It does not simply mark the solar year. It changes how the temple is used according to it. The route a devotee takes to the deity is different in February from what it is in September.

That is a fine piece of design. It makes the calendar something a worshipper walks through rather than reads about, and it means the building itself keeps time.

Sarangapani belongs to a scheme that organises Vaishnava pilgrimage across the whole subcontinent, and it is worth understanding.

The 108 Divya Desams:

• The temples of Vishnu celebrated in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, the four thousand Tamil verses of the Alvars
• A temple is a Divya Desam if an Alvar sang of it, which makes the list a record of where they went rather than a ranking
• Of the 108, most are in Tamil Nadu, with others in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Nepal
• Two are not on earth in the ordinary sense, being Vaikuntha and the ocean of milk

The Alvars:

• Twelve poet saints of the Tamil country, generally placed between roughly the sixth and ninth centuries
• The name means those immersed, in God
• They wrote in Tamil, not Sanskrit, and the Prabandham is treated in Sri Vaishnavism as equivalent in authority to the Vedas, which is why it is called the Tamil Veda
• They came from a range of communities, and included Andal, a woman, and Tiruppan Alvar, remembered as belonging to an excluded community

What Sarangapani has. Several Alvars sang of this temple, and the name Aravamudhan comes from Nammalvar, the greatest of them, who is said to have been so overcome while singing of the deity here that he could not complete the verse.

Why that detail is preserved. A tradition that records the moment its greatest poet was unable to finish a line is telling you what it values. The point is not the completed hymn. It is that the deity was too much for him.

What the Divya Desam scheme does. It converts a body of poetry into a map. Anyone who wants to follow the Alvars can go where they went, and a good many devotees attempt the full 108 as a life's undertaking.

The town Sarangapani stands in is one of the densest concentrations of temples in India, and it has an event that occurs once in twelve years.

Kumbakonam's name. The katha explains it, and it explains the town's whole layout.

• At the end of a cosmic dissolution, a kumbha, a pot, held the seed of creation and the nectar of immortality
• It floated on the waters and came to rest here
• Shiva, as a hunter, shot an arrow that broke the pot
• The nectar spilled, and the tanks of the town are where it fell
• The konam, the nose or tip, of the pot gave the town its name, and Adi Kumbeswarar is the Shiva temple that marks the spot

The Mahamaham:

• Held once in twelve years at the Mahamaham tank in Kumbakonam
• Held to be the occasion when the sacred rivers of India come to the tank
• Enormous numbers bathe, counted in lakhs across the day
• It is one of the largest periodic gatherings in south India

The temples of Kumbakonam. The town has a very large number, and the principal ones include:

• Adi Kumbeswarar, the Shiva temple at the town's centre
• Sarangapani, the principal Vishnu temple
• Nageswaran, notable for its architecture and for a solar alignment in the Tamil month of Chithirai
• Ramaswamy and Chakrapani
• The Mahamaham tank and the many smaller tanks

A safety note about the Mahamaham. Very large crowds at a tank with steps have caused deaths at this event in the past. If you attend, go early, do not press toward the water in a crowd, keep children held, follow the arrangements, and be prepared to bathe at a less crowded ghat rather than at the most auspicious point at the most auspicious hour.

That last point applies at every major bathing festival in India, and it is the single most useful piece of advice anyone can give about them.

Getting there

• Kumbakonam, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu
• Kumbakonam has a railway station on the Chennai to Thanjavur route and is well connected
• Roughly 40 km from Thanjavur, 90 km from Tiruchirappalli and 280 km from Chennai
• Tiruchirappalli is the nearest airport
• The temple is in the town and is walkable from the centre

Timings

• Open in morning and evening sessions with a long midday closure, as is standard for Tamil temples. Check locally
• Note that the entrance in use depends on which half of the year it is

When to go

• November to February for the most comfortable weather. Tamil Nadu is hot from March
• Vaikuntha Ekadashi in Margazhi, the great Vaishnava occasion, when the Paramapada Vasal is opened at Vishnu temples
• The temple's Brahmotsavam and car festival
• Margazhi, the Tamil month from mid December, when Vaishnava temples are at their most active and the Tiruppavai is recited daily
• The Mahamaham, once in twelve years, if the timing falls

Dress and conduct

• Tamil Vaishnava temples generally expect men to remove upper garments in the sanctum area, and traditional dress is preferred. Check the rule at the entrance
• Women should dress conservatively, and saris or salwar are the norm
• Photography inside is restricted. Ask
• Leave footwear at the counters

Seeing the town properly

• Kumbakonam rewards two days rather than an afternoon
• Adi Kumbeswarar, Nageswaran, Ramaswamy and Chakrapani are all within walking distance
• The Mahamaham tank and the smaller tanks
• Darasuram, with the Airavatesvara temple, is 4 km away and is a World Heritage Site
• Swamimalai and Thirunageswaram are close by
• Gangaikonda Cholapuram is about 35 km north

A closing thought. There is a version of temple visiting that consists of standing in a queue, seeing the deity for four seconds and leaving. Kumbakonam does not reward that. The town is a machine made of temples and tanks, laid out around a story about a pot, and it takes a couple of days to see what it is doing.