Thillai Nataraja Temple

Deity

Nataraja and Sivakami, with the Chidambara Rahasyam (the element of space)

Where

Chidambaram, Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu · 11.40N 79.69E

Usual hours

5.30 am – 12.30 pm, 4 pm – 9 pm — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Guru

Visited for

Akasa, space, and the hall of the cosmic dance. Arudra Darshanam in Margazhi and the six annual abhishekams are its days; visited for release from fear and for a settled mind.

The sthala purana is set in the Thillai forest. Sivan is said to have come there with Vishnu in the form of a woman to humble a body of sages who held that ritual alone was enough. The sages sent a tiger, a serpent and the dwarf Muyalakan against him; the sthala purana has it that he took the tiger’s skin, wound the serpent about himself and danced on the dwarf.

Two devotees are said to have asked to see the dance of bliss: Patanjali, who came in the form of a serpent, and Vyaghrapada, whose name means tiger-footed. The dance was given to them here on the day of the Ardra star, which is why Arudra Darshanam in Margazhi is the temple’s day.

Behind the image of Nataraja is a space closed by a curtain and hung with strings of golden bilva leaves. This is the Chidambara Rahasyam. What is shown when the curtain is drawn is empty air, and that is the point: the element here is akasa, space, and the tradition holds that the lord of this place is not an image at all.

Chidambaram is a Tevaram Paadal Petra Sthalam, and Manikkavachakar’s Thiruvachakam is bound to it. The Cholas took Nataraja as their house deity, and the core of the present temple is Chola with substantial later Pandya, Vijayanagara and Nayak building.

The Govindaraja Perumal shrine inside the same walls is one of the 108 Divya Desams, so the complex is a Saiva and a Vaishnava kshetram at once — an arrangement with a long and sometimes contested history.

Worship is conducted by the Dikshitars, a hereditary body of priests who administer the temple themselves rather than through the state endowments department.

Nataraja and Sivakami stand in the Chit Sabha, a small hall roofed with gold tiles, with the Kanaka Sabha in front of it. The whole arrangement is of wood and metal rather than stone, which is unlike anything else of its size in the south.

The 108 karanas of the Natya Sastra — the basic units of classical dance — are carved in sequence in the passages of the gopurams, and are the reason dancers come here as much as devotees.

The complex has four tall gopurams, a thousand-pillared Raja Sabha, the Sivaganga tank, and the separate shrines of Sivakami and Govindaraja Perumal.

Nataraja receives six abhishekams in the year. Arudra Darshanam in Margazhi and the Aani Thirumanjanam in Aani are the two largest, each with a chariot procession, and the temple street is packed for both.

Natyanjali, a dance festival held at Maha Sivaratri, brings performers from across the country to the temple’s halls.

Also called

Thillai, Koyil, Chitrambalam, Akasa Sthalam

Period

Chola period at its core, with Pandya, Vijayanagara and Nayak additions

Reaching it

Chidambaram has its own railway station on the Chennai Egmore–Thanjavur line. The town is about 60 km south of Puducherry and roughly 40 km from Cuddalore; the temple is in the centre of it.

• Sattainathar Temple, Sirkazhi 18.3 km · Saiva
• Thirunangur Divya Desams (Garuda Sevai) 23.5 km · Vaishnava
• Vaitheeswaran Koil 23.6 km · Saiva
• Thiruvathigai Veerattaneswarar Temple 25.7 km · Saiva
• Thiruvenkadu Swetharanyeswarar Temple 27.4 km · Saiva
• Keezhperumpallam Naganathaswamy Temple 27.9 km · Saiva

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

• Were the hours right when you went?
• Is anything on this page wrong or out of date?
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