It is before 7 am on a Sunday morning, but the lane that leads to the Arulmigu Thiyagarajaswamy Temple in Thiruvottiyur is already bustling.
Marauding chicken squabble with stray dogs, dodging ambling goats; a small grey kitten perched on a sack of flowers washes herself energetically; the smell of the aforesaid mentioned flowers mingles with that of food, dung and incense, while rain-manufactured slush and rubbish is smeared all over the road, like tacky make-up.
“Don’t leave your slippers here,” says the temple guard as I attempt to kick them off into an already-existing pile in front of the temple. People steal them, he adds, pointing to a covered corner which is safer for footwear (I assume).
CHENNAI: TAMILNADU: 16/08/2017: FOR MADRAS WEEK: Sri Thyagarajarswamy Temple (Vadivudai Amman Temple) at Thiruvottiyur in Chennai. Photo: V. Ganesan.
Chappals stowed, I move towards the entrance, admiring its solid wooden door studded with large gilt-coated knobs and the elaborate seven-storied, sky-grazing raja gopuram surmounting it.
According to the temple’s website, the Thiyagarajaswamy temple is one of the 275 (some sites say 276) paadal petra stalams in the country. Chosen from amongst the staggeringly large number of Saivite temples that dot the country, the paadal petra stalams all find mention in the Tevaram hymns composed by the Nayanars (saints devoted to the Lord Shiva).
This indicates that the temple is at least 1,500 years old. “We don’t know who built it, but there has been mention of it in devotional hymns composed in the 7th and 8th Century,” says historian Pradeep Chakravarthy. The patronage of the Chola kings, however, is what made it expand and grow to this extent, he says.
Inscriptions lining the wall of the temple bear testimony to this fact, says Chakravarthy, pointing out panels of finely etched stones that detail the life and times of the Chola rulers. There were more set on the floor too, he says, until a 2013 renovation by temple authorities saw these slabs being replaced by rough granite.
“There was one that talked about the temple devadasis going on strike, for instance. It brought the whole economy of this place to a standstill,” he says.
In his book The Early History of the Madras Region , archaeologist KV Raman refers to the temple as one of the oldest and greatest of South India. Located in the “Saivite centre” of Thiruvottiyur, it is believed that Tamil poet Kamban studied the Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit here, before writing his own Tamil version of it.
According to Raman’s book, the inscriptions, many of which go back to the Pallava period, offer insights into a number of topics, including, “construction of some of the shrines and mandapas , the existence of a number of mathas in the premises of the temple for the propagation of Saivism, and for patronising the learned, the visit of great kings like Rajarajadeva III and many devotees from Northern India, the celebration of a number of festivals from time to time, the provisions for recital of the Vedas and Tevaram during special occasions, and also on the social, economic and political conditions of those times.”
There are other interesting stories on the temple floors, as Vinita Sidhartha of Kreeda games, an organisation involved in reviving traditional games, points out.
You probably wouldn’t notice them as you walk over, but there are numerous board games scratched across the floor of the temple. “I find it fascinating that there are a variety of games here that don’t seem native to Tamil Nadu,” she says.
While this evidence perhaps goes too far back for any direct conclusions, it could indicate that Thiruvottiyur was once a rich, important trading port, a place where cultural exchange happened as a natural corollary to trade.
“These games indicate that different people from different backgrounds were coming together,” she says.
(This is the fifth of a six-part series that looks at various neighbourhoods in North Chennai as part of Madras Week)
