Around the World

Continued from http://allyouwannaknow.net/aroundtheworld/2009/06/28/trip-to-kovalam-%e2%80%93-part-2/

Suchindram is a place where the temple housing Bramha, Vishnu and Shiva together is present. This supposedly called the Sthanumalayan temple.

Alittle bit about the temple. there are supposed to be 2 stories related to this place. Firstly,
Indra got relieved of a curse at the place of the main linga in the temple. The term “Suchi” in Suchindrum is believed to have derived from the Sanskrit meaning that stands for “purify”.Accordingly Lord Indra is supposed to visit the temple for performing “Ardhajama Pooja” or prayer.
Why Indra was cursed…..this was because he lokked at a Rishi’s wife with not so good intensions:)

Another story that goes here is…
Once Narada told the 3 devis…Saraswathi, Lakshmi and Parvathi that there was this rishi Atri’s wife Anasuya who was a great Pathi vratha and that nobody could beat her in her love, affection, obedience and respect for her husband.
This triggered a jealousy among the goddesses and they forced their husbands to go down to earth and test Anasuya.
So Bramha , Vishnu and Shiva came down to earth as Brahmins asking for alms. They approached Anasuya.
According to her rituous ways she laid leaves to serve food to them. But they insisted that she serves them without any clothes on her.
She was in a dilema. She cannot refuse food to brahmins….but also she cannot serve three men without wearing clothes.
She closed her eyes…prayed…and with complete faith on her devoyion to her husband she sprinkled water on the three men and turned them into babies. She then fed them well.
when her husband came home…she told him all that had happened. The 3 devis then came down and tried to take their husbands. But they were unable to identify which of the babies was whose husband…
Finally the rishi turned them back to men.
this story took place in Gnyanaranya which is now called Suchindram after the Indra incident.

We reached this place at 12:40PM. We were not allowed to carry mobiles or cameras inside. So we left everything in the car. Men have to take off their shirt while going into this temple.
We were told that the temple would close at 1:00PM. So we walked in as fast as possible.
I have never been to a famous temple that is not crowded….that too in Tamilnadu….this was the first…
It was nice. First was Vinayagar having Parvathi devi (his mother) on his lap. To enter this shrine we have to go through the navagraha which is carved on the roof.
Next was the golden shrine where we could see three faces and one body which represented Brahma, Vishnu and Shivan.
After this we went to check out the famous pillars. There was an old preist who promised to show us how the sounds came from the pillars if we paid him Rs 10. We paid him and he told us that the pillars were made from a single stone and were inter connected. If we kept our ear on one of them and banged the other pillars there was a sound echo inside the stone pillars and different sounds were generated.
The sounds were supposed to be the seven notes of carnatic music S R G M P D N…of of course I could not make out the sounds so distinctly….but yes, there were different sounds and melodious.
Similarly another set of pillars were there which sounded like kathakali music.

After this was the subrahmamnya shrine and then was the huge anjaneya.

We finished this and came out quite quickly as there was not much crowd and it was nice…

Next destination was Kanyakumari.

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