From the Bhakti List Archives
Mani Varadarajan
• Tue Apr 20 1999 - 13:14:49 PDT
An addendum to my previous note on the 'tAn Ana tirumEni',
the image of Sri Ramanuja that is in the Srirangam temple
complex.
Sri Koyil Tirumanjanam S. Sundararajan, a longtime resident
of Srirangam and an informal Vaishnava historian, had this
to say about this image and its unusual appearance:
SrI rAmAnuja was the only personage whose remains were
interred inside the Great Temple precincts. The mUla image of
the AchArya was fashioned over his relics and hence it is known
as the Image per se, tAm Ana tirumEni. (This image receives,
twice a year, a coat of camphor mixed with saffron, and this
special observance had continued for the last eight centuries
and a half.)
(see http://www.best.com/~mani/sv/bhakti/archives/jun97/0056.html)
Mani
