Meenakshi
மீனாட்சி मीनाक्षी
Also Angayarkanni, Thadathagai, Madurai Amman.
ShaktaSaiva
Who this is
Meenakshi is the queen of Madurai and the rare case of a goddess who rules in her own right with the god as her consort. She was born to the Pandya king as a daughter when a son was asked for, raised as the heir, trained in arms, crowned, and took the army out on conquest. The city is hers: the temple is named for her, her shrine is the larger, the wedding is the city’s annual festival and Sundareswarar is the one who married in. Tamil Saiva tradition does not treat this as an exception to be explained away, and the Madurai priests are firm that the first darshan is hers.
How to recognise them
Green or emerald dark, standing, with a parrot on her right hand and a lotus in the left, crowned, with fish shaped eyes, which is what her name means. Not shown with the third breast of her birth, which vanished at the meeting. In the wedding images Vishnu stands between them as her brother, giving her away.
Family and companions
Daughter of the Pandya king Malayadwaja and Kanchanamala, born of a sacrifice. Wife of Sundareswarar, who is Siva. Her brother is Vishnu as Alagar, who comes from Alagar Koil for the wedding and, in the Chithirai telling, arrives to find it already done and turns back at the Vaigai, which the city keeps as its own festival day.
How they are worshipped
The Chithirai festival; Friday and Tuesday; Navaratri; the Aadi month.
Chithirai is the month: the Meenakshi Thirukalyanam, the wedding, and the Alagar crossing of the Vaigai, together the largest festival in the Tamil country. Navaratri is kept with the golu. Green is her colour and the parrot her bird. Friday and Tuesday are her days, and a Madurai household takes a new venture to her before anything else.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The third breast
The Pandya king asked for a son and the fire gave him a three year old girl with three breasts. He was dismayed; a voice told him to raise her as a son, and that the third breast would vanish when she met the man she would marry. She was taught statecraft and arms, crowned, and went out to conquer in every direction. At Kailasa she faced Siva, and the third breast vanished, and she knew. The telling is not an embarrassment about her being a woman: she had already conquered the eight directions before it happened, and Madurai keeps the conquest as hers.
The brother who came late
Alagar, Vishnu, set out from his hill to give his sister away. He was delayed, and by the time he reached the Vaigai the wedding was done. He would not enter the city. He stepped into the river, gave his blessing from there and turned back. Madurai keeps the Vaigai crossing as a festival of its own, with the god carried into the water and lakhs on the banks, and the point the city makes of it is that a slight is kept in the calendar rather than tidied out of it.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- Madurai is hers, with the Chithirai Thirukalyanam and the Alagar crossing; the temple is named for her and her shrine takes the first darshan.
- Kerala
- The Madurai Meenakshi is visited by Kerala families and the Bhagavathy shrines keep a comparable independence from a consort.
- Andhra and Telangana
- Known through the Chithirai festival and the Meenakshi Pancharatnam of Adi Sankara, which is sung well beyond the Tamil country.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple Madurai, Tamil Nadu
What is said
From the mantra library