Tiruvottiyur Tyagarajar and Vadivudai Amman Temple - Part 6

In the past five blog posts, I have been writing about the legend and architecture of the gigantic ancient temple of Thyagarajar and Vadivudai Amman, located at Tiruvottiyur near Chennai. This post is a continuation of those posts.

I have completed writing about the main sanctum of Adi Pureeswarar and the shrine of Tyagaraja. Now, let me cover the outer corridor of the temple. Unlike other temples, this corridor houses a lot of icons and shrines. The entire temple's outer corridor was surrounded by tall, thick walls similar to a small fort.

As per Hinduism, there are 27 stars, and each month is divided into 27 days of these stars; each human being in this world is born on any of the days of any of these stars. The corridor of Tyagarajar temple has 27 small shrines of Shiva Lingas representing all these 27 stars. This is one of the unique collections of shrines that cannot be seen generally in the other temples. Adjacent to these shrines, there are icons of Ganesha and Murugan. 

There is a shrine for a Goddess named Valarkali, which is a bust image. It is believed that this icon grows inch by inch periodically and hence got the name 'Valar Kali' as the word 'Valar' in Tamil means 'growing'.

There is a separate shrine for Shiva in this corridor, where he is depicted in a unique posture. He, named Lakulisa, is in Padmasana posture (yoga). Two icons of Adi Shankara are also found in the same shrine. This small shrine has the icons of Brahma and Vishnu on its surrounding wall. All the above shrines and icons are found in the south direction of the temple.

The west side of the temple houses a shrine for a big Shiva linga named Annamalai with a Nandi in front of him, a long steep Shiva ling named Agasa Ling in a separate shrine, a big linga named Jambukeswarar in another separate shrine, and two small shrines for two small Shiva lingas named Nagalingeswarar and Kalatheeswarar adjacent to a tree.

There is another shrine that enshrines Meenakshi and Sundareswarar. In addition, Ganesha and Murugan are also present. The wall surrounding the shrine houses the niche images of Ganesha, Dakshinamurti, Vishnu, Brahma and Durga. Chandikeshwari is found near Brahma's sculpture.

Apart from that, there is a prominent shrine for Tiruvotteeswarar. As I need another post to write about this shrine, let me continue the same in the next post.

Till then...Happy travelling.

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