Vadaranyeswarar Temple, Thiruvalangadu
வடாரண்யேசுவரர் கோயில், திருவாலங்காடு
Why this temple matters
In a grove of banyans near Arakkonam in the old Chola country, Shiva stands as Vadaranyeswarar in the hall of jewels — the Ratna Sabhai, where he is remembered as dancing the fierce upward dance, the Urdhva Tandava, and where the saint Karaikkal Ammaiyar sang at his feet.
History
Thiruvalangadu — a name that means the banyan forest — lies in the old Tondai country of northern Tamil Nadu, near Arakkonam and within reach of Chennai. Its temple to Shiva as Vadaranyeswarar, the lord of the banyan wood, is a Paadal Petra Sthalam, sung by the Nayanmar saints in the Tevaram, with origins in deep antiquity and its stone shrines shaped under the Cholas. The place is bound above all to the memory of Karaikkal Ammaiyar, one of the earliest of the sixty-three Nayanmars, who is said to have come here to lie at the dancing feet of the lord; and its name lives on in the celebrated Thiruvalangadu copper-plates, a great Chola record.
Architecture
The temple stands in the mature Dravidian manner, entered through a gopuram and gathered around the sanctum of Vadaranyeswarar, with a separate shrine for the Goddess Vandarkuzhali. Its heart is the Ratna Sabhai, the hall of jewels, one of the five sabhas where Shiva is honoured as the cosmic dancer. Here the lord is shown in the rare and strenuous posture of the Urdhva Tandava, one leg raised straight upward — the fierce dance by which he is said to have prevailed — a form seldom seen among the many images of Nataraja.
Legends
The great legend of Thiruvalangadu tells of a dance contest between Shiva and the goddess Kali, who ruled the forest. To humble her pride the lord danced, and the two matched step for step, until Shiva raised his foot straight up above his head in the Urdhva Tandava — a posture that modesty forbade the goddess to imitate — and so she yielded, and took her place as the guardian of the shrine. Karaikkal Ammaiyar, the gaunt and devoted saint who had cast off all worldly beauty for the love of Shiva, witnessed the dance and sang it, and her presence hallows the temple still. As the Ratna Sabhai, the jewel hall, Thiruvalangadu takes its place among the five sabhas of the dancing lord, whose foremost is the golden hall at Chidambaram.
Festivals
The temple's year turns on Arudra Darshan, the Thiruvadirai festival sacred to Shiva as the dancer, when the shrine of the Urdhva Tandava is at the centre of worship. The annual car festival draws the surrounding villages, and the days sacred to Karaikkal Ammaiyar are kept with particular devotion. Pradosham evenings and the Shivaratri night fill the forest shrine with lamps and hymns.
The Experience
Thiruvalangadu is a quiet forest temple away from the great pilgrim highways, rewarding for the devotee who seeks the rarer face of Shiva's dance and the memory of one of Tamil Shaivism's most beloved saints. It lies about 15 km from Arakkonam and within a day's reach of Chennai, and joins the other halls of the dance — the gold at Chidambaram, the silver at Madurai, the copper at Tirunelveli, and the painted hall at Courtallam — into the single pilgrimage of the five sabhas.