Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam
அரங்கநாதர் கோயில், ஸ்ரீரங்கம்
Why this temple matters
The largest functioning Hindu temple in the world, wrapped in seven concentric enclosures on an island in the Kaveri — the foremost of the 108 Divya Desams, where Vishnu reclines as Ranganatha in the very heart of the town.
History
Srirangam is revered as the first and foremost of the 108 Divya Desams, the abodes of Vishnu sung by the Alvar poet-saints, and is called Bhuloka Vaikuntham — 'Vaikuntha on earth'. Its origins are lost in antiquity, but the temple as we see it grew over a thousand years of royal patronage: the Cholas, Pandyas, Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara emperors and the Madurai Nayaks each added enclosures, halls and towers. The philosopher Ramanuja, the great systematiser of Sri Vaishnavism, lived and taught here in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the temple remains the spiritual centre of the tradition. Its history also carries scars — the shrine was sacked during the Delhi Sultanate incursions of the early fourteenth century, when devotees are said to have spirited the processional deity away for decades before its triumphant return. Through every upheaval, daily worship has continued, and Srirangam is today as much a living town as a temple.
Architecture
Srirangam is built as a mandala of seven concentric rectangular enclosures — prakarams — one within another, pierced by twenty-one gopurams, so that entering the temple is a slow passage from the bustle of the outer streets toward the stillness of the golden-vimana sanctum at the centre. The southern Rajagopuram, completed in 1987, rises around 72 metres and is among the tallest temple towers in the world, yet it crowns a plan whose bones are medieval. Within are some of the finest halls in South India, above all the 'thousand-pillared' mandapa and the Sheshagiri Rayar mandapa with its rearing warrior-horse piers of the Nayak period. The reclining Ranganatha lies within the innermost sanctum beneath a vimana plated in gold. The scale is civic rather than merely architectural: markets, homes and mathas fill the outer prakarams, so the temple is a walled sacred city.
Legends
The sthala purana tells that the reclining image of Ranganatha was worshipped by Rama himself and given to the Ikshvaku kings, then carried south, where it chose to remain on the island of Srirangam facing south toward Lanka. For Sri Vaishnavas the temple is inseparable from the Alvars, whose Tamil hymns, the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, are recited here, and from Ramanuja, whose preserved form is venerated within. The most beloved festival legend is that of Vaikuntha Ekadashi, when the Paramapada Vasal — the 'gateway to the supreme abode' — is opened once a year and the faithful pass through in the belief that to do so is to glimpse liberation.
Festivals
Srirangam's calendar is vast, but its summit is the twenty-one-day Vaikuntha Ekadashi festival in the Tamil month of Margazhi (December–January), when Ranganatha in his jewelled armour processes through the thousand-pillared hall and the Paramapada Vasal is thrown open to enormous crowds. The Brahmotsavam, the float festival on the temple tank, and the Adi Brahmotsavam are all celebrated with processions of the utsava deities. The recitation of the Divya Prabandham during the Adhyayana Utsavam is central to the temple's devotional life.
The Experience
Srirangam is entered, not merely visited. Walk inward through the prakarams and feel the noise of the bazaar give way to sanctity gate by gate; non-Hindus may go as far as the golden vimana's outer viewing point though not into the innermost sanctum. Look for the Nayak horse-pillars, rest in the great halls, and time a visit if you can to an evening when the deity is brought out in procession. The temple sits on an island between the Kaveri and its tributary the Kollidam, a short drive from Tiruchirappalli, and pairs naturally with the nearby Jambukeswarar temple, one of the Pancha Bhoota Sthalams.