Kanjanur Agneeswarar Temple

Deity

Agneeswarar (Sivan) and Karpagambal with Sukra Bhagavan

Where

Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu · 11.02N 79.44E

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

Visited for

The Sukran sthalam, the birthplace of Haradatta Sivacharya. Friday is its day; visited for marriage, for comfort at home and for the ease that Sukran is asked to give.

The sthala purana has it that Agni worshipped Sivan here and gave the place its name, Agneeswarar — the lord worshipped by fire.

Sukran’s connection is told in two ways at Kanjanur, and both are heard from the priests. In one, Sukracharya, who lost an eye to Vamana’s blade of kusa grass, worshipped here and was relieved. In the other, Sukran is held to be present within the moolavar itself rather than in a separate shrine, which is why the abhishekam on a Friday is done to the linga and not to a planet’s image.

Kanjanur is also remembered as the birthplace of Haradatta Sivacharya, whom tradition holds to have been born into a Vaishnava family and turned to Saivism, and who is worshipped in the temple with a shrine of his own.

A small delta temple with a short prakaram, quieter than Suryanar Koil down the road except on a Friday.

Agneeswarar is the moolavar and Karpagambal has her own shrine. Haradatta Sivacharya’s image stands in the prakaram, and the navagraha group is present in the usual place.

Friday is the day, and the Fridays of Aadi and Thai and the day Sukran changes sign are the fullest.

The temple keeps the ordinary Saiva calendar otherwise — pradosham, Sivaratri and the Margazhi mornings.

Also called

Sukran Sthalam, Agneeswarar Temple

Reaching it

Kanjanur is about 2 km from Suryanar Koil and roughly 18 km from Kumbakonam, which is the nearest railway station. The two temples are almost always visited on the same morning.

• Suryanar Koil 2.2 km · Saiva
• Thiruvidaimarudur Mahalingaswamy Temple 3.5 km · Saiva
• Thirunageswaram Naganathaswamy Temple 4.6 km · Saiva
• Oppiliappan Temple, Thirunageswaram 5.6 km · Vaishnava
• Adi Kumbeswarar Temple 9.3 km · Saiva
• Sarangapani Temple, Kumbakonam 9.3 km · Vaishnava

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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