Arunachaleswarar Temple

Deity

Arunachaleswarar (the element of fire) and Unnamulai Amman

Where

Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu · 12.23N 79.07E

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

Sevvai Suriyan

Visited for

Agni, the fire among the five elements, and the hill that is itself the linga. Karthigai Deepam and the Girivalam on every pournami are its observances; visited to burn off a long-standing affliction.

The sthala purana has it that Brahma and Vishnu fell to arguing over which of them was the greater, and that Sivan appeared between them as a column of fire with neither top nor bottom. Brahma flew upward as a swan to find the top and Vishnu went down as a boar to find the root. Vishnu came back and admitted he had not found it; Brahma is said to have claimed he had, with a screwpine flower as his false witness, and to have been cursed to have no temple of his own.

The hill at Tiruvannamalai is held to be that column of fire, cooled into stone. This is the reason the hill itself is treated as the deity and walked around rather than climbed, and the reason the beacon lit on its summit at Karthigai Deepam is the temple’s central act of the year.

Parvathi is said to have done penance at the foot of the hill after playfully covering Sivan’s eyes, and to have been taken into his left side. She is worshipped here as Unnamulai Amman.

Arunachaleswarar is a Tevaram Paadal Petra Sthalam and one of the most heavily built temples in Tamil Nadu: Chola work at the core, with the great outer enclosures and towers added under Vijayanagara and the Nayaks. The eastern Rajagopuram, the tallest of the four, is associated with Krishnadevaraya.

Arunagirinathar, whose Thiruppugazh is sung across Tamil Nadu, is connected with this temple by long tradition. Ramana Maharshi lived at Tiruvannamalai for most of his life, first in the temple precincts and later on the hill, and that part of the town’s history is within living memory and well recorded.

One of the largest temple enclosures in the state: several concentric prakarams, four tall gopurams at the cardinal points, and a thousand-pillared hall in the outer court.

The Pathala Lingam, a small underground cell where Ramana Maharshi is said to have sat for long periods, is in the outer prakaram. The Sivaganga tank lies inside the walls.

The hill stands immediately behind, and the girivalam path — a metalled road of about fourteen kilometres that circles it — starts and finishes in the town. Eight lingams are set around the path at the eight directions.

Karthigai Deepam is the great festival. A cauldron of ghee is lit on the summit at dusk and burns for days; the flame is visible for a long way across the plain, and the town is impassable.

Girivalam is walked on every pournami through the night, and the roads around the hill are closed to through traffic for it. Maha Sivaratri and the Thai and Aadi pournami walks are the other heavy nights.

Also called

Annamalaiyar Temple, Arunachalam, Agni Sthalam

Period

Chola work, greatly enlarged under Vijayanagara and the Nayaks

Reaching it

Tiruvannamalai is about 185 km from Chennai by road and roughly 65 km from Villupuram. It has its own railway station on the Villupuram–Katpadi line, and the temple is in the middle of the town.

• Mel Malayanur Angalamman Temple 29.6 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Thirukkovilur Veerateswarar Temple 33.2 km · Saiva
• Padavedu Renukambal Temple 41.4 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Sripuram Mahalakshmi Golden Temple 72.6 km · Vaishnava
• Melmaruvathur Adhiparasakthi Siddhar Peetam 86.6 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Devanatha Perumal Temple, Thiruvahindrapuram 87.9 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.

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