Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

http://www.frontline.in/stories/20090424260812300.htm

HERITAGE

Poetry in stone

TEXT BY T.S. SUBRAMANIAN & PHOTOGRAPHS BY K. GANESAN

The wonders of the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple in Madurai, after its recent renovation.

WE are standing on the eastern side of the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, chosen on March 30 as one of the "Seven Wonders of India" by NDTV through a poll it conducted as part of the Union Tourism Ministry's "Incredible India" campaign. Although it is only around 9 a.m., business has already picked up, with devotees and Indian and foreign tourists bargaining with shopkeepers in the temple's pudu mandapa (new hall). Even as we scan the tall, stupendous base of the unfinished Raya gopuram in front of us, with its ornate thoranas, elegant carvings, sculptures of dancing damsels, lion-based pilasters and niches, the eyes of the scholar-leader of our team light up. He darts forward, removes the wooden planks propped up on the base and reveals a beautiful stone sculpture of Tirumalai Nayak (A.D. 1623 to 1659), the ruler of Madurai who contributed to the temple's expansion.

A few steps away, we are on Ezhu Kadal Street, one of the oldest streets in Madurai. To our disappointment, the sacred tank, after which the street is named, is no longer there. A big multi-storeyed shopping complex has taken its place. "I have seen the tank brimming with water in the early 1980s," says K. Ganesan, Special News Photographer, The Hindu/Frontline.

Ezhu Kadal (Seven Seas) has a 500-year history behind it. An inscription that used to be at the spot referred to Saluvanarasa Nayak, an officer of the Vijayanagar emperor who excavated the tank in 1516 to collect "merit" for the emperor Krishnadevaraya. Opposite the multi-storeyed shopping complex is a small temple dedicated to Kanchanamala, mother of Meenakshi. According to legend, Sundareswarar, Meenakshi's consort, made the seven seas converge in Madurai to fulfil Kanchanamala's wish to bathe in the seven seas of the world. Back in the pudu mandapa built by Tirumalai Nayak, a world of poetry in stone awaits us. It is full of sculptures of indescribable beauty: Siva as "Ekapadamurthy", "Gajasamharamurthy", and "Ravana anugrahamurthy"; Siva performing the "Urthava thandava" dance; Kali; prancing yalis; warriors on horses; mythical animals; and so on. There are also sculptures depicting scenes from Siva Lila (Tiruvilayadal Puranam in Tamil), which took place in Madurai – Siva converting foxes into horses, a stone-elephant coming alive to eat sugarcane, Siva feeding milk to a piglet, Siva preaching to a black sparrow, and so on.

Another facet of the pudu mandapa emerges as a temple employee opens the gates and leads us into its central nave. Standing on huge pillars on either side of the imposing corridor are majestic portrait sculptures of 10 rulers of the Madurai Nayak dynasty – from Viswanatha Nayak, the progenitor of the dynasty, to Tirumalai Nayak with his two wives.

The real beauty of the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple is emerging before the viewer's eyes, thanks to the temple administration's efforts to give a facelift to the historic site on the occasion of the khumbhabhishekam, held on April 8. The 15-acre (one acre is 0.4 hectare) temple complex has been bus, sthapathis and masons have been working to refurbish the complex. Load-bearing granite beams and roof slabs that had developed cracks have been replaced with new architectural members. The hideous metal cladding that obscured the view of the geometrical and floral designs of the pillars have been removed. The vimana of the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine of Meenakashi has been gold-plated now. About 30 kilograms of pure gold was converted into sheets to cover it.

Karumuttu T. Kannan, Chairman, Board of Trustees of the temple, called it a "challenge" to replace the four beams and 87 roof slabs with new members. Kannan said: "It was not easy to take them out because these structures were several centuries old and their stability was involved." The metal props that supported the structure in the south-east corner of the Meenakshi shrine's sanctum sanctorum were replaced with pillars. A team of sthapathis sculpted these pillars with carvings.

Now the temple premises is a riot of polychromatic colours. The 12 gopurams, including the four majestic raja gopurams with hundreds of stucco sculptures, painted in multicolours, glow in the sun. Mandapas with pillars and elegant sculptures have received a generous coat of polyurethane, which K. Rajanayagam, temple executive officer, claimed was a "preservative". Panels of small sculptures that run for several hundred metres above the capitals of pillars dazzle with enamel paint. Rajanayagam said the attempt was to restore the temple's originality "as per the principles of agama".

The temple complex stands in the heart of Madurai town, on the banks of the Vaigai river. Its architecture is marvellous, with inner and outer prakaras running around the two sanctum sanctorums. On the four sides of the complex are streets that run parallel to each other, in the form of a square within a square – a testimony to the excellent town-planning of those early days. The temple's origin, growth and development are organically linked to those of the town.

D. Devakunjari says, "Whether as a temple city or a capital city, the history of Madurai is distinct from that of other cities. Politically, Madurai was the capital of a single dynasty, the Pandyas, who ruled continuously as far as is known from the early years of Christianity down to the 14th century. This fact alone, more than anything else, is enough to gain for Madurai a unique place. Even after the Pandyas, Madurai continued as the capital of some dynasty or the other for four centuries more. It has, therefore, had a continuous history as a political capital for eighteen centuries."

In this book, published in 1979 by the Society for Archaeological, Historical and Epigraphical Research, Chennai, the late Devakunjari says: "The history of Madurai as a religious centre goes back to remote times when the temple, one of its oldest institutions, has had a coeval history with those of the rulers and remains as important as ever even after the rulers have disappeared. The Madurai temple is not only of hoary antiquity but possesses an entire purana of its own,