Sunday, September 5, 2010

Thiruvalluvar temple in Mylapore Chennai

Close to the Mundakanni amman koil we came to this temple .Though it was originally a siva temple it was rebuilt by the Govt and it is said that Thiruvalluvar was born in mylapore near the illupai tree inside the temple and a board is placed in the temple testifying it..

Thiruvalluvar%20Temple

It is a simple, two-roomed shrine enclosed by an open-pillared portico.  There is a main shrine for tiruvalluvar and to his left is a shrine for Vasuki

Thiruvalluvar

To the left are what were probably the original shrines for Shiva (Ekambareswarar) and his consort (Kamakshi). The temple has several sub-shrines, most of them in small niches in the wall. To the rear, near a neem tree surrounded by naga statues, was a shrine for Amman. All these suggest that the temple was originally a village temple that slowly gained prominence as a Shiva temple and then became the shrine for Thiruval­luvar.

Except for the stone idols, there are no traces of the structure of the original temple after the renovation by the Government. The processional deity of Ekambareswarar is stored in a temple vault and the ones of Thiruvalluvar and Vasuki are clearly a century or two old.

In his book called Thirumayilayin Thirukoilgal, published in 1989, Dr. S. Rajendran believes that the temple was built in the early part of the 16th Century. This is not evident, as the temple was extensively renovated in the early 1970s and most of the stone structures were replaced by concrete

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