Kanchi Kamakshi Amman Temple

Deity

Kamakshi Devi seated in padmasana with the Sri Chakra

Where

Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu · 12.84N 79.70E

Usual hours

6 am – 12.30 pm, 4 pm – 8.30 pm — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Sukran Chandran

Visited for

One of the three great Shakti kshetras of the south and the seat of the Sri Chakra installed by Adi Sankara. Navaratri and Fridays are its days; visited for marriage, learning and prosperity.

The sthala purana has it that Kamakshi did penance here standing in the middle of five fires, and afterwards made a linga of sand on the bank of the Vegavathi and held it through a flood — which is the story the Ekambareswarar temple tells from the other side. The two temples are two halves of one purana.

Kanchipuram keeps a custom that follows from it. There is no separate Amman shrine in the Siva temples of the town, because the Devi of Kanchi is held to be present in this one place and nowhere else in the city.

Adi Sankara is said to have installed the Sri Chakra before the Devi here and to have settled her into the seated, quiet form she is worshipped in. The temple has been associated with the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham ever since.

Kamakshi is counted with Madurai Meenakshi and Kasi Visalakshi as one of the three great Devi kshetrams of the tradition.

The image known as Bangaru Kamakshi, which belonged to this temple, was carried south during the invasions of the eighteenth century and has been at Thanjavur since; it is worshipped there in a temple of its own. That much is documented, and the temple at Kanchi continues with the image it has.

The Devi is seated in padmasana with the sugarcane bow, the flower arrows, the noose and the goad, and the Sri Chakra is set before her.

The vimana over the sanctum is gold-plated. The Gayathri mandapam stands in front, and Adi Sankara has a shrine in the prakaram.

The tank is inside the walls, and the outer court is broad and unhurried compared with the Ekambareswarar temple across town.

Navaratri is the festival, with the Devi taken out each evening, and Fridays are the weekly day. The Aadi and Thai Fridays are heaviest.

The Chithirai Brahmotsavam with the car, Sankara Jayanti and the Varalakshmi Vratam Friday in Aadi are the other full days.

Also called

Kamakoti, Kamakshi Devi Temple

Period

Pallava origins, with the present structure largely of the Vijayanagara period and later

Reaching it

Kanchipuram is about 75 km from Chennai by road, with its own railway station. The Kamakshi temple is in the middle of the town, roughly 2 km from Ekambareswarar and 3 km from the Varadaraja Perumal temple.

• Ekambareswarar Temple, Kanchipuram 1.1 km · Saiva
• Varadharaja Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram 3.9 km · Vaishnava
• Vallakottai Murugan Temple 28.2 km · Murugan
• Adi Kesava Perumal Temple, Sriperumbudur 29.8 km · Vaishnava
• Patalathri Narasimha Temple, Singaperumal Koil 35.1 km · Vaishnava
• Vadaranyeswarar Temple, Thiruvalangadu 36.1 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?
• A photograph of the gopuram, the tank, or the notice board

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