Thiruvengadu temple

I have already blogged about the adhistnam of the Kanchi acharya  in this temple town. The temple is a very famous old temple more famous for its budhan (Mercury) . Bronze images and panchaloha images of Adithya chola and  Raja raja chola times have been unearthed from here and are in the museums at Tanjore and Chennai.



The Temple is a very huge one with three big ponds inside in five  different praharams.The soma kundam surya kundam referred in silappathikaram are said to refer to these ponds The main Diety is Shwetaranyeshwarar and the Goddess is Brahma vidya nayaki. Since Yama was punished here for taking the life of Swetakethu .Yama prayed here and was relieved of his curse . Thus the lord is called Swetaranyeshwarar
The main sanctum has a large Sivalingam behind this is the sanctum for Vishnu (The adi devatha here) To the North west in the main praharam are the praharams for Agora murthy and a separate sannidhi for Natarajar.
legend associated with this temple is that of demon Maruthuvan, son of demon Salanthiran. Maruthuvan was a staunch devotee of Lord Shiva. He performed rigours penance and was blessed with a trident (“Soolam” in Tamil). After receiving this blessing, he started terrorising the Devas. On the request of Devas, Lord Shiva instructed Nandhi to punish Maruthuvan. In the fight that ensued, Maruthuvan hit Nandhi in 9 places with the trident. On knowing this, Lord Shiva took the form of “Aghoramurthy” and vanquished the demon. This Murthy is the furious incarnation of Lord Shiva. It represents one of his five faces - “Aghoram”. It is believed that Lord Aghoramurthi killed the demon under a tree here. This tree can still be seen in the temple. The idol of Nandhi which is in front of the lord can be seen with 9 scars on its body Agora murthy is one of the 64 forms of shiva The Natarajar is unique in that he has a chidambaram style sannidhi and it is said that shiva did 7 types of dance here The Nataraja image bears the seven instruments and weapons - Vetalam, Khadgam, Udukku, Mani, Kedayam, Kapalam and Trisulam .
Once you come out of this prakaram you will see there are two shrines for ashta lakshmi with four in each shrine


The next structure you see is the Budhan sanidhi with the amman sanidhi in the back ground


The rudra mandapam seen from the Budhan sanidhi. This tank was dug by Indra to escape from a curse he incurred from Durvasa. He gave a mala received from Durvasa to Airavatha who trampled it and so incurred durvasa’s wrath so he atoned by worshipping shiva and dug a pond in this temple.
Next to the Amman sanidhi is the Adhishtanam of Brahma who was the father of the amman Brahma vidya nayaki.
A very huge temple with lots of Antiquity and three huge ponds full of water!!. Still the rush is for budhan sannidhi