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Great intoductions

From the Bhakti List Archives

Venkatesh Elayavalli/DCOM • March 8, 1995 


Hello  everyone,

Wow, it took me a while to go through all the introductions that Mani had
sent, many thanks to him.

I specifically enjoyed the introduction from Vaidehi Venkatakrishnan, in
particular, her experiances in Triplicane and her description of the 
various activities at Sri Parthasarathy Perumal temple. I can relate to all 
of her descriptioins since i too had spent most of my childhood (mostly during
Summers though) at my grand parents place near the temple. 

There are two other vaishnava temples that i would like to mention at this time.
These temples are not very well known even in TN.

1. Sholingapuram Narasimhar Perumal and Aanjineyar temple.

This is our family temple, there are two hills near this town (very close
to Arrakkonnam, near Madras). One is the host for Sri Narasimhar temple and
the other for Sri Aanjineyar temple. It is said that Lord Narasimhar after
destroying Prahalad's father came to this hill and remained there for ever.
After the Lanka war, Lord Aanjineyar when flying over the hills was attracted
by the sight of the Narasimhar temple, became devoted to Lord Narasimhar and
took place on top of the other hill.  

I am not sure to what extent this story is true, however, one aspect of the two
hills  amazes me, even today. The Aanjineyar temple and the hill that hosts
the temple has plenty of monkeys. On the other hand, one cannot find a single
monkey on the first hill that hosts the Narasimhar temple, this is true, i have
been there twice and specifically indicated so by my dad. The foot of the two 
hills are about 100 - 150 mts and the valley between the two hills hosts about
4 or 6 houses, mostly belonging to the temple folks.

The town is very small and not very well connected by road or rail. But it is
a great place, extremely peaceful location.

2. Karpangadu Varadharaja Perumal temple.

I have been to this temple twice, once when they had the Maha Kumbabishekkam
and second time when i visited my grand parents (maternal) near Mannargudi four
years ago.

Four decades ago, there were four villages near mannargudi: Karpangadu,
Serangulam, Nammangurchi and the name of the fouth village slips my memory.
Of the four, only two survive today, Karpangadu and Serangulam (my 
grand parents are still live here). decades ago, Karpangadu used to be a very
popular temple site for iyengars in Tanjavur Dist. Recently the temple have
started to gain popularity among Iyengars in Kumbakonam, Mannargudi and
Tanjavur area. The village is still not easily accessible from Mannargudi,
however one can take a taxii from Mannargudi, it takes about  one hour to reach
Karpangadu from Mannargudi by road.

serangulam has a smaller temple named after the karpangadu temple.
when i go there i have evening parsadham made at the temple madapalli. I am yet
to taste puliyodharai that is better than the one made at this temple. It is 
the best i have had so far in my life.


These are two temples i would recommend to add to the list of other temples
that you all may plan to visit when you go back to TN. I have few more 
that i can't remember at this time. I'll soon put together some notes
on few other that may be interesting to the group. I would also appreciate
it other can post some of their knowledge of Vaishnava temples that are
not very well known to folks outside their town or village.

-venkatesh.