Panpozhi Thirumalai Kumaraswamy Temple

About 7 km from Sengottai, a small hill shaped like the syllable Om rises out of green country ringed by the Western Ghats, and the Thirumalai temple crowns it. Pilgrims first bow to Vallabha Vinayagar at the foot, and to a pair of sacred footprints in the Patha Mandapam, before starting the climb. Naduvatta Vinayagar waits halfway, then Idumban. At the top, sixteen more steps lead to Uchi Pillaiyar, the Shodasa Vinayagar. In the east-facing sanctum Murugan stands with four arms, the shakti spear and the vajra in his upper hands, the lower right raised in blessing and the lower left in the simhakarna gesture, with the vel and his rooster banner beside him. Thirumalai Kali, guardian of the hill, has her own north-facing shrine in the northern corridor.

The temple legend goes like this. Once there was only a vel on this hill, and a priest named Poovan Pattar worshipped it. One afternoon, after the noon puja, he dozed off under a tamarind tree, and Murugan came to him in a dream: "This hill is mine. I lie buried as an image at Kottaithiradu nearby. Dig where you see a line of ants going into a hole." Pattar hurried to the king of Pandalam, and at the king's order they dug and found the image, but a crowbar chipped a small piece off its nose. The tiny scar only made the face lovelier, and the village people fondly named him Mookkan ("the one with the nose"). The image was brought up the hill, and at Pattar's request the king of Pandalam built the temple. This is the same Pandalam royal house that built Sabarimala, and the Ayyappa shrines of Aryankavu, Achankovil and Kulathupuzha all lie around this town.

The temple owes much of its later growth to Sivakami Ammaiyar. Childless, she resolved to build a stone mandapam on the hill, and dragged stones and bricks up from the foot herself on strips of plantain stem. Elephants hauled the stone pillars and beams, but strong rope was unknown then and the palm-fibre ropes kept snapping. When a pillar broke loose and came tumbling down, she cried "Muruga!" and stopped it with her head, holding it until it could be hauled up again. Still no child came. A Muslim holy man, Masthan, who stayed in the mandapam she had built, told her to take this Murugan as her own son, and she willed everything she owned to him. Her statue stands in the temple.

The spring at the top was once called the Ashtapadma Kulam and is now the Poonjunai. In the old days it bloomed with a single kuvalai flower a day, which the seven divine mothers picked to worship Murugan. That is why the Saptha Kanniyar, usually found only in Shiva temples, sit on the bank of this spring in a Murugan temple. Rare herbs such as odavalli and nala mooligai once grew on the hill. On the first day of every Tamil month, food is served to all comers from morning till night.

The temple was built by the kings of Pandalam. Sivakami Ammaiyar, the driving force behind its later rebuilding, came from a well-off family of Achanputhur, a village on the Hanuman river; she lived from about 1784 to 1854. With her husband Kankamuthu she built a bridge over the Hanuman river that is still called the Kankamuthu bridge. When others were enjoying temple lands at Puliyarai village, she went to court in Thiruvananthapuram, produced inscriptional evidence and won the lands back for the temple. Thirumalai is one of the Thevaram Vaippu Sthalams, and Arunagirinathar, Thandapani Swamigal and Kaviraasa Pandarathaiya sang of its Murugan; there is also a poem, the Thirumalai Andavar Kuravanji, in his praise. For a long time the hill could be climbed only on foot; a motor road now runs to the top. The HR&CE Department administers the temple.

People born under Visakam come here to pray for relief from doshams, and are told to make the climb at least once in their lives. Those whose prayers are answered light lamps around the corridor. Devotees hold that climbing the sixteen steps to Uchi Pillaiyar brings the sixteen kinds of wealth, and some perform tharpanam for their ancestors on the hill steps. Across the Tirunelveli region children are named Mookkan, Mookkandi or Mookkammal after this Murugan, and families who had lost babies would vow to pierce the next child's nose and name it Mookkan. These are matters of faith; for a child's health, a doctor's advice comes first. Anyone who finds the climb hard can take the road.