Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple called as Periyakovil (Big Temple), Bhooloka Vaikuntham, and Srirangam Tirupati is a Hindu temple dedicated to Ranganatha Swamy located in Srirangam, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It is the most illustrious Vaishnava temples in South India rich in legend and history. It is one of the oldest surviving active temple complexes in South India. The temple is minimum 2500 to 3000 years old archeologically and traditionally 3 million years old. The temple has played an important role in Vaishnavism history starting with the 11th-century career of Ramanuja and his predecessors Nathamuni and Yamunacharya in Srirangam. The temple was looted and destroyed by the Delhi Sultanate armies in a broad plunder raid on various cities of the Pandyan kingdom in early 14th century. The temple was rebuilt in late 14th century, the site fortified and expanded with many more gopurams in the 16th and 17th centuries. The temple occupies an area of 155 acres with 81 shrines, 21 towers, 39 pavilions, and many water tanks integrated into the complex making it the world's largest functioning Hindu temple. The temple town is a significant archaeological and epigraphical site, providing a historic window into the early and mid-medieval South Indian society and culture. Numerous inscriptions suggest that this Hindu temple served not only as a spiritual center, but also a major economic and charitable institution that operated education and hospital facilities, ran a free kitchen, and financed regional infrastructure projects from the gifts and donations it received. The Srirangam temple is the largest temple compound in India and one of the largest religious complexes in the world. Some of these structures have been renovated, expanded and rebuilt over the centuries as a living temple.

The temple site is on a large island bounded by the Kaveri River and Kollidam River. It is vast and planned as a temple town with Sapta-Prakaram design where the sanctum, gopuram, services and living area are co-located in seven concentric enclosures. Rampart walls were added after medieval centuries that saw its invasion and destruction. The temple monuments are located inside the inner five enclosures of the complex, surrounded by living area and infrastructure in outer two enclosures. Numerous gopurams connect the Sapta-Prakaram enclosures allowing the pilgrims and visitors to reach the sanctum from many directions. The site includes two major temples, one for Vishnu as Ranganatha, and other to Shiva as Jambukeshvara. The island has some cave temples, older than both. According to Sriranga Mahathmyam, Brahma was performing austerities during the Samudra Mathana (churning of cosmic ocean), and Srirangam Vimanam emerged as a result. It remained in Satya Loka for ages, was brought to Ayodhya by king Ikshvaku. After Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, had killed the evil demon Ravana, he gave it to King Vibhishana who wanted to be with Rama. When Vibhishana passed through Tiruchi enroute to Sri Lanka where he had become the king, the Srirangam Vimanam would not move from the island. So, he gave it to a local king called Dharma Varma, if the king consecrated the Vimanam to face the south cardinal direction eternally, blessing him and Lanka. Hence, it is that the deity in a reclining posture, faces South, his body aligned to the east-west axis.

As per another legend, Sanaka, the four child sages, came for a darshan of Ranganatha in Srirangam. They were stopped by Jaya and Vijaya, the guardians of Vaikuntha. Despite their pleadings, they were refused entry. In anger, all four of them cursed the guardians in one voice and left. The guardians approached Vishnu and told him about the curse. Ranganatha said that he would not be able to revert the curse and gave them two options: be born as demons opposing Vishnu in three births or good human beings in the following seven births. Eager to be back with the Lord, The guardians accepted being demons and are believed to have taken the form of Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu; Ravana and Kumbhakarna; and Sisupala and Dantavakra. Vishnu assumed four avatars – Varaha, Narasimha, Rama, and Krishna, respectively – to kill the demons in each one of those births. The Mahabharata says that after Arjuna's marriage with Uluchi he went to various pilgrim centres present in the South. Arjuna is said to have visited this temple and offered prayers to Ranganatha. There is a mandapa called Arjuna mandapa in the temple.

The main deity of the temple is mentioned in various Sanskrit literature and epics such as the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Padma Purana, Brahmanda Purana and Garuda Purana. There are mentions even in the Tamil literature of the Sangam era (500 BCE to the 300 CE), there are mentions in many books like Akanaṉūṟu, Purananuru, Paripāṭal and Silapadikaram. The temple was first built by the Chola ruler, Dharmavarma. The Kaveri River flood destroyed the temple vimanam, and later, the early Cholas King Killivalavan rebuilt the temple complex as is present today. Beyond ancient textual history, archaeological evidence such as inscriptions refer to this temple and these stone inscriptions are from late 100 BCE to 100 CE. There are many mandapas which were built near the main sanctum sanctorum which date to 100 CE to 300 CE built by Uraiyur Cholas. There were later additions of structures and inscriptions in the temple which belong to the Chola, Pandya, Hoysala, Gajapatis, Marathas and Vijayanagara dynasties who ruled over the region. These inscriptions range in date between the 7th and 17th centuries. During the period of invasion and plunder by the Alauddin Khilji's Muslim general Malik Kafur and his Delhi Sultanate forces in 1311, the Arabic texts of the period state that he raided a ‘golden temple’ on river ‘Kanobari’ (Kaveri), destroyed the temple and took the plunder with the golden murthi of the deity to Delhi. According to Steven P. Hopkins, this is believed to be the Ranganathaswamy Temple.

Beyond these legends, there was a more severe second invasion of South India including Srirangam between 1323 CE and 1327 CE by the armies of the Sultanate under Muhammad bin Tughluq. The sanctum's Vishnu image with its jewelry was pre-emptively removed by the Hindus before the Delhi Sultanate troops reached Srirangam by a group led by the Vaishnavite Acharaya Pillai Lokacharyar to Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. The goddess Ranganayaki (Lakshmi) was also taken away to another location by a separate group. The temple was defended and according to the Tamil tradition some 13,000 Sri Vaishnavas devotees of Srirangam, died in the fierce battle. After nearly six decades when Madurai Sultanate ruled after the Pandyan rulers were ousted after the repeated Delhi Sultanate's invasions, the Vijayanagara Empire ousted the Madurai Sultanate in 1378. Thereafter, the image of Namberumal was brought back to Srirangam. Before then, for decades the deity and the priestly wardens wandered and secretly carried the temple's murthi through villages of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. They finally went to the hills of Tirumala Tirupati, where they remained until the temple was rebuilt in 1371. The murthi was consecrated again according to the legends. This time, in memory of the first Sultan's daughter which tradition calls Thulukha Nachiyar, a niche in the temple was built for her. The niche shows her as a girl sitting on a horse that carried her to Delhi. Her legend is still remembered. During contemporary processions when the murthi is taken out of sanctum and then returned to it after its journey, Thulukha Nachiyar is dressed in Muslim garments and food offerings are made to her in the form of butter and chappathis.

Thereafter, under the Vijayanagara Empire, the temple site saw over 200 years of stability, repairs, first round of fortifications, and addition of mandapas. The Vishnu and Lakshmi murthis were reinstalled and the site became a Hindu temple again in 1371 CE under Kumara Kampana, a Vijayanagara commander and the son of Bukka I. In the last decade of the 14th century, a pillared antechamber was gifted by the Vijayanagara rulers. In the 15th century, they coated the apsidal roofs with solid gold sheets, followed by financing the addition of a series of new shrines, mandapas and gopuras to the temple, according to George Michell. The historic inscriptions at the Ranganathaswamy Temple are in six major Indian languages: Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi and Odia. Many of the inscriptions are in Grantha characters. After the destruction of the Vijayanagara in late 16th century, geo-political instability returned. The site became the focus of bitter wars between the Hindu Nayakas and the Muslim Mughals in the 17th century. The Nayakas fortified the temple town and the seven prakaras. It was taken over by Muslim Nawabs of Arcot as a lucrative source of revenues, and thereafter attracted a contest between the French and British military powers. Srirangam temple site and the neighboring city of Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) became an intense center of Christian and Muslim missionary activity during the 18th and 19th centuries. With the establishment of the Madras Presidency within the British Empire, geo-political stability returned and the Ranganathaswamy Temple site attracted interest in archeological and historical studies.

Some mention substantial gifts to the temple. A Chola king, for example, presented the temple with a golden serpent couch. Some historians identify this king with Rajamahendra Chola. The temple has witnessed and played a key role in the early Sri Vaishnavism history, particularly the centuries that followed the major Hindu philosopher Ramanuja (1017–1137 CE), and his predecessors Nathamuni and Yamunacharya. It witnessed the debate between the Dvaita (dualistic) and Advaita (non-dualistic) sub-traditions within Vaishnavism. Centuries later, it was a key site in the debate and disagreements between the northern Tamil and southern Tamil traditions, also called as the Vadakalai and Tenkalai. The early rulers such as the Pallavas, Cholas and Pandyas supported it as a hub of the Bhakti movement with a devotional singing and dance tradition, but this tradition stopped during the 14th century and was revived in a limited way much later.

The temple is enclosed by seven concentric enclosures with courtyards (termed prakarams or mathil suvar). Each layer has walls and gopurams, which were built or fortified in and after the 16th century. These walls total 32,592 feet or over six miles. The temple has 17 major gopurams (towers, 21 total), 39 pavilions, 50 shrines, 9 sacred water pools, Ayiram kaal mandapam (a hall of 1000 pillars) and several small water bodies inside. The river has long been considered sacred and called the Dakshina Ganga or the ‘Ganges of the South’. The outer two prakarams (outer courtyard) are residential and markets with shops, restaurants and flower stalls. The five inner courtyards have shrines to Vishnu and his various avatars such as Rama and Krishna. Major shrines are additionally dedicated to goddess Lakshmi and many saints of Vaishnavism called the Alvars, as well Hindu philosophers such as Ramanuja and Manavala Mamunigal of Sri Vaishnavism tradition. Despite the construction of various mandapas and gopuras over a span of many centuries, the architecture of the Ranganathaswamy temple is one of the better illustrations of Hindu temple planometric geometry per agama design tradition. According to George Michell, a professor and art historian on Indian architecture, the regulating geometry and plan of Srirangam site takes on ‘a ritual dimension since all the architectural components, especially the focal gopuras and the most important colonnades and mandapas, are arranged along the axes dictated by the cardinal directions’. This alignment integrates the routes that devotees follow as they journey into the innermost sanctum.

The temple complex includes over 50 shrines. These are dedicated to Vishnu, Lakshmi as well as various Vaishnava scholars and poets. The shrines to Vishnu display him in his various avatars, as well as his iconography. For example, Sri Ranganathaswamy temple shrines include those of Chakkaratalvar, Narasimha, Rama, Hayagriva, and Gopala Krishna. The shrine of Ranganatha's consort, Ranganayaki (Lakshmi) is in the second precinct of the temple with 2 main murthis and 1 procession utsava murti. During the festival processions, Ranganayaki does not visit Ranganatha, but it is he who visits her. Ranganatha visiting Ranganayaki and being with her is called as 'Saerthi' during 'Panguni Uthiram'. There are three images of Ranganayaki within the sanctum. Thousand pillar mandapam is a theatre like structure made from granite. It was built during the Vijayanagara rule period. It has a central wide aisle with seven side aisles on each side with pillars set in a square pattern. Sesharaya mandapam is the intricately carved hall built during the Nayaka rule period. It is found on the east side of the fourth prakaram courtyard. The northern side of this community hall has 40 leaping animals with riders on their back, all carved out of monolithic pillars.

There are 21 gopurams (tower gateways), among which the towering Rajagopuram (shrine of the main gateway) is the tallest temple tower in Asia. The 13-tiered Rajagopuram had a base constructed around 1500 AD and later completed in 1987 by Ahobhila Matha, a historic Sri Vaishnava Hindu monastery. This tower dominates the landscape for miles around, while the remaining 20 gopurams were built between the 12th and early 17th centuries. The gopurams have pronounced projections in the middle of the long sides, generally with openings on each of the successive levels. The Vellai gopura (white tower) on the east side of the fourth enclosure has a steep pyramidal superstructure that reaches a height of almost 144 ft. The structure of the Rajagopuram remained incomplete for over 400 years. Started during the reign of Achyuta Deva Raya of Vijayanagara Empire, the construction stopped after the fall of Vijayanagara in late 16th century and wars thereafter. The Rajagopuram did not reach its current height of 240 ft until 1987, when the 44th Jiyar of Ahobila Matha began collecting donations to complete it. The whole structure was constructed in a span of eight years. The Rajagopuram was consecrated on 25 March 1987.

The Ranganathaswamy Temple town has over 800 inscriptions, of which nearly 640 are on temple walls and monuments. Many of these relate to gifts and grants by rulers or the elite, while others relate to the temple's management, scholars, dedication and general operation. The inscriptions have been a source of information about South Indian history, culture, economy and social role. These range from the late 9th century to the rule of Aditya Chola, to the last historical ones from the 16th century. Others are from the times of Cholas, Nayakas, Pandyas, Hoysalas and the Vijayanagara era.

Photography, Videography & Live Coverage by Sri Photos - https://www.sri.photos/