The Wonder That Is Hindu Temple

By London Swaminathan

INDIA is a Hindu country with over one hundred thousand temples. They are famous for their architecture. The holy places give solace to millions of Hindus. In addition to sacredness or holiness, the temples are big tourist attractions. It boosts the tourist industry. Millions of vendors who sell things around the temples are supported by the Hindus. Temples and priests get their income or salary from devotees. Restaurants and lodges make huge money during festivals. Musicians and dancers are supported by the temples. So Hindu temples are not just places of worship like other religions. Since theirs have no Pujas or rituals they look like lifeless places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Sep 17, 2022
• ISBN: 6580553509066

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The Wonder That Is Hindu Temple

Author :

London Swaminathan

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Table of Contents

FOREWORD

1.The Wonder that is Madurai Meenakshi Temple

2. Hindu Temple Mystery!

3. Tamil Book Launches in Temples!

4.Twenty Types of Temples in Ancient India!

5. Largest Golden Temple in the World

6. WHAT TO SEE, WHERE TO GO IN KANCHIPURAM?

7. FOURTEEN IMPORTANT VISHNU TEMPLES IN KANCHIPURAM!

8. UTTARAMERUR WONDERS

9. MY VISIT TO GHOST BUSTER SAMADHI IN GODDESS TEMPLE

10. My Visit to Horoscope Temple

11. My visit to Kidney Stone Cure Temple

12. SAMADHI OF A GREAT SAINT IN NERUR

13. Hindu Saint’s ‘Upadesa’ to a Muslim devotee

14. English Collector saw Lord Rama in Madurantakam!

15. British Collector who saw Lord Rama

16. My Visit to Thiruppullani Adi Jagannatha Perumal / Vishnu Temple

17. MY TRIP TO THIRU VEN KAADU- BUDHA KSHETRA

18. MY VISIT TO NELLAI SHIVA TEMPLE

19. MY VISIT TO TIRUKKURUNKUDI & NANGUNERI

20. THIRU UTTARA KOSA MANGAI IN BULLET POINTS

21. Wonders and Dhanushkoti Wonders

22. VISITED 30 PLUS TEMPLES IN  22 TOWNS IN TAMIL NADU

23. Don’t go to the Temples empty handed!

24. Temples of Ancient Tamil Nadu

25. TEMPLES BUILT BY KUNKUMA AND LOKA MAHA DEVIS

26. Visit to Trayambakeswaram Temple!

27. My Visit to PANCHAVATI & MUKTIDHAM

28. Yatra to Shirdi Baba Samadhi

29. Do Saints’ Samadhis have Divine Power? Can They do Miracles?

30. MY VISIT TO KANCHIPURAM

31. WHAT IS ARUDRA FESTIVAL? WHY DO HINDUS BATHE SHIVA FOREVER?

32. SUN LIGHT SHINES ON NANDHI/BULL IN HINDU TEMPLE

33.MY VISIT TO TIRUVANNAMALAI SHIVA TEMPLE AND ASHRAMS OF RAMANA & SESHADRI SWAMIGAL

34 .God performs Funeral Rites: Strange Custom in Tiruvannamalai

35. The Great Lamp Festival- Karthikai Deepam

36. LIZARD WORSHIP IN TAMIL NADU AND ROME

FOREWORD

INDIA is a Hindu country with over one hundred thousand temples. They are famous for their architecture. The holy places give solace to millions of Hindus. In addition to sacredness or holiness, the temples are big tourist attractions. It boosts the tourist industry. Millions of vendors who sell things around the temples are supported by the Hindus. Temples and priests get their income or salary from devotees. Restaurants and lodges make huge money during festivals. Musicians and dancers are supported by the temples. So Hindu temples are not just places of worship like other religions. Since theirs have no Pujas or rituals they look like lifeless places.

If one can prepare a budget for building a new temple like Madurai temple or Halabidu temple one would need billions of rupees to erect such a monument. Each idol or statue in a temple is worth millions in the art market. With the treasures we found in Thiruvananthapuram alone, we can ‘buy’ the whole world. Tirupati, Madurai and other temples have priceless jewels.

Temples are repository of old and historical inscriptions.

For writers, each temple has something unique. Foreigners have written lot of books about our treasures in the temples. It is Hindus’ duty to preserve them intact for posterity. This book contains my articles written and posted in my blogs  over a period of ten years. You find the serial number of my post and the date of posting in every article. There may be some repetitions of matter in my articles. I will bring out another book soon with the temples outside India.

I welcome your comments and my contact details are in the book.

London Swaminathan

September 2022, London

1.The Wonder that is Madurai Meenakshi Temple

Written by london swaminathan and uploaded on 14th October 2011 on to his other blog.

Why did they send Meenakshi’s pendant to Queen Victoria of England?

Why did Madurai temple pillars go to the Philadelphia Museum in USA?

Why did an English collector present gold shoes to Goddess Meenakshi?

Why did Victoria and Albert Museum in London hang a Meenakshi curtain?

Why does the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford have Madurai pillar replicas?

Why does the India office Library keep pictures of Madurai Temple?

How did the Houston (USA) Meenakshi temple receive a Madurai idol even after the plane crashed?

Read now for the answers:

I was walking through the streets of London in 1991 thinking about the answers for the BBC listeners’ questions. My Question and Answer programme was judged the best among non-current affairs programmes of the BBC World Service in that year because it attracted 19,000 letters of appreciation from the listeners around the world. I was working as the producer of the BBC Tamil Service known as ‘Thamizosai’. The BBC in house magazine ‘Ariel’ published my photo and a write-up about my programme. So I took much interest in answering the questions. When I entered a book shop on the high street my eyes were searching for good books in the shelf and found out ‘Wonders of the World’ published by Automobile Association, UK. When I flipped through the pages for information for listeners’ questions, I was surprised to see Madurai Meenakshi Temple listed as one of the world wonders. Madurai was my home town. When the Indians failed to recognise it as a world wonder, a London book had recognised it as a world wonder in 1991! When I saw big campaigns in Tamil news papers twenty years after this to support Meenakshi temple as one of the modern wonders I was laughing. Better late than never!

(A word of advice: If you visit any temple and want to enjoy the art treasures, forget the gods. If you go to the temple just to worship god, forget the art treasures. You can’t mix both.)

MADURAI is the second largest city in Tamil Nadu, India. It is 300 miles south of Chennai/Madras.

Madurai Meenakshi Temple is an architectural wonder. When one climbs to the top of the South Tower to have a bird’s eye view of Madurai, one can’t but wonder about the engineering skills of our forefathers.

Meenakshi temple’s old pictures or objects can be seen in India Office Library, London, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Houston Meenakshi Temple, Texas, USA.

The pillars of one of the Madurai temples, Madana Gopala Swamy Kovil are in Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA. A lady from Philadelphia visited Madurai in 1930s and got interested in the temple pillars .They were just lying there without any care. She knew the value of art work in the pillars and shipped them to USA. Now a mandap/hall is reconstructed with those pillars in the museum. The temple was built in the fifteenth century in Madurai.

Queen Victoria wanted to see one of the jewels of Goddess Meenakshi. It was a pendant with ten big sapphire stones. It went to London and came back to Madurai to decorate the goddess.

British collector of Madurai Rose Peter, Shipping merchants Scotch Brothers and East India Company –all donated gold and jewels to goddess Meenakshi.

India Office Library, London has a haunting series of glass plate photographs of Pudu Mandapam opposite the temple taken in the 1850s by Captain Edward Lyons.

Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has the copper copies of some of the pillars of Madurai Pudumandapam.

Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a curtain where in Meenakshi temple’s daily activities are painted.

Scholars who have studied Angkor Watt temple in Cambodia, the largest Hindu temple in the world and the Mayan temple at Tikal in Guatemala , a Central American country have found out some similarities with Madurai temple.

The Meenakshi Sundareswarar (Lord Shiva is called the beautiful one Sundara +Eswara) temple is in the centre of the town Madurai in South India. The streets are arranged in squares within squares- a beautifully planned city keeping the temple at the heart of the city. Ancient Tamil literature compared this plan to a lotus flower

Each street carries the name of a Tamil month. That means goddess idol will be taken through that street