Adipatta Vinayakar Temple - Chennai

This temple, unknown to the outside world, is located at the junction of Mint Street and Audiappa Naicken Street in the Sowcarpet locality of Chennai city in India. Looking at the style of Dwarapalas and vimanas, I believe the period of the temple must be the 18th century or 19th century CE. Nothing much is known about this temple. Well, if you ask me the name of this temple, that is also not known. The local people call this Adipatta Vinayakar temple. The word "adipatta" means "beaten up" in the Tamil language. I could not gather more details about why this deity is called so.

This temple is literally hidden behind the shops, and hardly any passerby could notice. There are regular visitors to this temple. They visit the temple not to get darshan of the deity. But they just come here to draw drinking water and to have a chit-chat. This temple has become a regular meeting point for such people.

The east-facing temple has no tower. The sanctum enshrines Ganesh and his two consorts, Siddhi and Buddhi. Two more shrines are located adjacent to the sanctum, which enshrine Vishwanatha Linga-Vishalakshi and Subramanya-Valli-Devasena. There is a separate south-facing shrine for Vishalkshi. Ayyanar is found near this shrine.

The vimanas of all three shrines look very old. Without renovation and paintings, they really look original and beautiful.

All three shrines have koshta images on their outer walls.

Skanda and Idumban (?) are found as the niche images on the wall of the Subramanya shrine.

Ganesha in different forms, including the one with five heads, are found as the niche images in the shrine of Ganesh.

Dakshinamurti, Vishnu, Brahma and Durga are the niche deities found on the wall of the shrine of Vishwanatha.

Navagraha is also found in this temple. The Dwarapalas' images are very interesting and look unique.

It's a peaceful, beautiful and small temple.

Happy travelling.