The Sacred (and the Profane) in Southern India

in which I tell of our travels on February 17, 18 and 19, 2011:

We began and ended our last full day in Tamil Nadu with visits to two very impressive temples, both ancient, over a thousand years old, and both actively and continuously in use by devotees since they were first built. We were privileged to be invited to take part in some of the rituals and to observe others very closely. In our travels around the town of Chidambaram, home of Annamalai University, in Thanjavur, and around the farm fields we visited in Tamil Nadu province, we often saw small temples or temple-like structures, in urban and rural settings alike.

. . . like this one, atop a store front on a city street,

and this, in a small village,

or this, a little further out in the country.

 We often observed a vendor, or several, selling flowers or other items near the entrance.

On the morning of our departure from Chidambaram, we were invited by our very gracious host, Dr. Kathiresan, to attend the early morning rituals at the temple of The Dancing Lord Nataraj. (For more about this particular temple, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chidambaram_Temple> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja>).  Before you can enter through this gate, you must remove your shoes and leave them in a cubby, and proceed barefoot over sandy ground and then onto stone pavement inside the temple walls.

This is the East Gate, one of four entrances to this temple devoted to Shiva's performance of his cosmic dance. The figures show the specific forms of an ancient Hindu traditional dance.

 From outside, the temple gate looks as if it is the temple itself, but from certain spots it is possible to see the other gates, which appear to be separate temples a couple of blocks away, but in fact they are the entry points to an enclosed space of many acres, with a large center building surrounding another open space, and several adjunct structures and shrines in various places.

Here, a woman lights devotional candles at a small shrine within the temple walls but outside the main structure, praying to a deity best suited to answer her particular prayers.

In the very heart of the temple itself sits the "sanctum sanctorum," a sacred place housing the idols of the temple deity. I was surprised to hear the use of this Latin phrase, but I heard it spoken by our Hindu host as a familiar term, and have since seen it used in written descriptions as well; it is certainly an apt description for the place I saw and the manner in which it was venerated by worshippers. No photographs are permitted within the temple, so I cannot show you what I saw, but I will try to give you an image in words.

The structure is like a little raised house which you approach from stone steps on the side. It sits within the open courtyard inside the main temple structure, open to the sky and sunlight. All the temple interior is grey stone, weathered and often damp; the floors are dusty and dirty from the thousands of bare feet tracking in the sand and dirt from the outside world. All the more surprising, then, to look up and see the brilliant gleaming of some 26,000 solid gold tiles covering the roof of this humble stone house containing the three essences of Shiva. There could be no surer indication that what lies beneath this shimmering roof is a holy treasure to those who practice their faith here.

Before approaching the sanctum sanctorum, we were ushered by a bearded, white-clad temple priest or official into a small anteroom, where we were draped with flower garlands, given special herbs to eat, and wafted with smoke from a flaming torch passed before each of us. Our foreheads were anointed with a deep red powder indicating our having participated in this preparatory rite. We were then led to view the ritual "awakening" of the temple deity, where idols represent three forms of Shiva. Shiva is said to be represented by five essences or forms paralleling nature: water, earth, fire, wind, and air, or aether. The temple at Chidambaram represents Shiva as aether, or, more fundamentally, as infinity.

Within the inner sanctum, there is an inner chamber, screened off from public space by silvery grillework. This inner chamber has three sections, each closed off by a drape. The center holds a figure of Shiva as a seated human form. This idol is presented with offerings of food, water, bathing, and incense as an invitation to awaken for the present day. After the priests finish this process with songs and incantations, they draw back the drapes from the left chamber, where we view a silver garland of leaves hanging in three strands. Our host explains that in order for us to contemplate infinity we must have some visible form to associate with the concept, and so this garland of leaves implies infinite continuity. The curtain is drawn after the worshippers and viewers have had a few moments to squeeze close to gain a glimpse through the grille. The officiators then move to the right-hand chamber, drawing back the curtain to reveal a seated female figure, the feminine form of Shiva.

At certain special times of year, the temple deity is taken out of its inner sanctum and placed in a special chariot used only for this purpose, and paraded through the temple courtyards and perhaps the streets.

Two Temple Chariots parked outside near an open square in two different villages.

In the Hindu culture, there is complexity in every structure and every concept, and often of a mathematical nature. The temple structure is based on aspects of the human body, such as the number of orifices, the number of heartbeats or breaths one takes in a single day, and so on. It is a most intriguing culture, in which the most etherial and fantastical concepts are derived from a fundamentally concrete grasp of life experience. One could become quite lost trying to contemplate the meaning of all these things! Perhaps that explains all the ashrams . . .

We went on that day to view several farms and experimental rice plots, to witness the modern and the ancient techniques of farming, and to be received with ritual and ceremony by farmers and officials, as I've shown in my earlier entries. We left Chidambaram behind, and with it one very unique  and very intrusive guide, who constantly echoed what others had already said. His original contributions to the tours were theses two things: he insisted that every thing we saw there was "World Famous!" and that anything we could ever want could be had in the markets there for a "damcheep"good price! He uttered this descriptor so often, we concluded that he had perceived this as a single word and failed to realize that he was cursing mildly. "Damn Cheap!" we couldn't help exclaiming from that point onward, no matter what the price.


We went on our way to Thanjavur, to see the last of these fields, and then to visit the Brihadeeswarar Temple in that town. Brihadeeswarar Temple "is the world's first complete granite temple and a brilliant example of the major heights achieved by Cholas kingdom...in temple architecture. It is a tribute and a reflection of the power of its patron RajaRaja Chola I. It remains as one of the greatest glories of Indian architecture. The temple is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Great Living Chola Temples"." cited from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadeeswarar_Temple>.

This is one of the gates; to the far right, the tower with the round knob, is the center structure, and is some 66 meters high, and hollow inside up to the capstone. This tower is said not to cast any shadow on the ground no matter what time of day or season.

After again shedding our shoes, we were greeted just inside this temple gate by a small Asian elephant and its handler. Much to our surprise, most temples are supposed to have an elephant that they keep for certain rituals, and this one performed admirably the ritual of draping each of the visiting guests in our party with a huge garland of bright flowers. After draping the garland over our heads, the elephant paused to rest its trunk on the top of our heads as if dispensing a blessing.

The elephant is used to crowds of people and camera flashes.

The handler gives a garland to the elephant.

As the sun sets, Dr. Z gets garlanded.

Our traveling companion and new friend Manzoor takes his turn.

Here we are, garlanded guests with our hosts and companions.

We were joined by an official guide for the temple who ushered us quickly along and provided us with interesting facts and observations about the temple, its origins, its recent 1,000th anniversary at which 1,000 dancers performed in the large open area within the walls, and showed us some of the intricacies of the carvings. In the image shown here, he slips a small straw beneath the carved ribbons adorning the stone; each one is fully raised and articulated out of granite, one of the hardest stones to carve.

We climbed some steep steps to a raised platform, where we found a huge idol of a bull, Nandi, said to be Shiva's guardian. This sculpture has a scaffolding raised next to it on one side in order for the temple priests to be able to pour offerings of milk and ghee and to place flower garlands and petals on the form as part of their daily rituals. The bull is carved of a single piece of black stone, not found within at least 60 kilometers of this area, suggesting that a great deal of effort was needed when the temple was built, to transport the stone. The bull is wrapped in a single very long piece of silk woven for this purpose, again to show reverence to the deity.

In a less reverent frame of mind, our guide pointed out some carvings of female figures said to be the 14 wives of the king of the Chola Dynasty who had this temple built. "Wow," someone in our party remarked, "how did he manage all those wives?" I dare not say who, but one of our group quipped, "He must have used his lingam one yoni at a time!" (If you do not yet appreciate the meaning of "lingam" and "yoni," I direct you to wikipedia.) Maybe you had to be there, but it was one of the funnier moments of the whole trip, as it caught us by surprise coming from that usually very sober source.

Nandi, garlanded and draped. Note the elaborate painting on the ceiling above.

Moon over Temple Peak

By now, darkness had fallen and our tour was ending. The full moon appeared just at the top of the main tower, amid a brief spattering of raindrops. The day had begun, and ended, with a very special visit to ancient, active temples, which gave us a close-up view of another side of life in India.

The following morning we went to the airport at Tiruchirappalli, more familiarly called Trichy, for our flight to Chennai and from there to Hong Kong and home to Manila. We had most of the day in Chennai for one last look around a market place. Due to poor communication with our guide, we wound up in a mega-mall (speaking of the profane!) The whole place struck me as more obscene than any lingam-and-yoni statue could ever be, especially with the bizarrely precocious and massively large cherubs still on display from Valentines Day (a very big holiday in India for reasons unfathomable to me.)

Check out those cherubs!

As we walked through the airport, we saw another of the surprising and seemingly contradictory scenes linking the spirituality of India with the commercial. Workers were crouched on the floor with mounds of loose flower blossoms before a statue of Shiva, assembling an image we assumed to be devotional, as if refreshing the shrine. On closer inspection, we saw what you see below, the yellow and bluish logo of the Tamil Nadu Airports Authority, constructed of flower blossoms.

The Airports Authority logo - a yellow triangle with a blue streak, like an airplane taking off.

As one about to board a plane, I supposed it was not a bad thing to be asking a blessing of a deity by presenting the notion of the airport and all its business before a statue of the god. And sure enough, I managed to snag a business class seat once we got to Hong Kong, for the last part of the ride back to Manila.

Grinning like a fool, in my little business class cocoon!

Of course, it is not to a Hindu deity that I owe my thanks, for the classy seating on the airplane or for all the wonderful experiences I have had and continue to have on this journey, but to my dear friends Crissan and Bob, for inviting and including me in their lives for the past few weeks. I am deeply indebted to them for so enriching my life in this way.

As I write this we are already back in the Philippines and have been for a good week, and I have not yet begun to blog about this second part of the trip and all the wonderful doings we've done here. I promise I will. For now, I am closing out my tales of India, and giving thanks for all the blessings I've received and the fortunate life I've led.