Mahalingaswamy Temple, Thiruvidaimarudur
மகாலிங்கசுவாமி கோயில், திருவிடைமருதூர்
Why this temple matters
In the Kaveri delta, Shiva is worshipped as Mahalingaswamy — Madhyarjuna, the great linga at the centre of the delta's Shiva temples — in a vast Chola shrine sung by the Tevaram saints.
History
Thiruvidaimarudur lies in the Kaveri delta near Kumbakonam, its great temple grown from Chola foundations and sung in the Tevaram, the Tamil hymns of the Nayanmar saints. The lord here is Mahalingaswamy, and the place is Madhyarjuna, held to stand at the centre of the delta's Shiva temples, with Tiruvarur and others as its limbs.
Architecture
The temple spreads in the Dravidian manner through wide enclosures and pillared halls beneath towered gateways, one of the larger shrines of the delta. Its corridors carry Chola and later work, and the great linga is worshipped at its heart.
Legends
Madhyarjuna — the 'middle arjuna' — is held to be the centre of a group of Shiva temples of the delta, so that a pilgrimage here is a pilgrimage to the heart of the region's Shaiva faith. The temple is sung by the Tevaram saints, marking it a Paadal Petra Sthalam, a shrine hymned by the earliest Tamil devotees of Shiva.
Festivals
Maha Shivaratri and the temple's own festivals of the Nayanmar draw pilgrims through the year, with the great car festivals among the delta's grandest. The days of the Tevaram saints are kept with recitation of the hymns.
The Experience
To worship at Thiruvidaimarudur is to stand at the traditional centre of the Kaveri delta's Shiva temples — a vast, hymn-sung shrine at the heart of one of India's densest landscapes of devotion.