Tiruvannamalai Arunachaleswarar Temple

At Tiruvannamalai the hill and the Lord are not two things. The heart of belief here is that the hill itself is the Shiva lingam, which is why devotees walk around the hill as well as the temple.

The sthala puranam tells it this way. Brahma and Vishnu argued over which of them was greater. Shiva stood before them as a vast column of light whose base and top could not be found. Vishnu took the form of a boar and dug down through the earth, but could not find the base and turned back. Brahma flew upward as a swan. On the way he met a thazhampu flower that had slipped from Shiva's matted hair and, the story says, asked it to give false witness that he had seen the top. For this, the puranam says, Shiva decreed that Brahma would have no temple on earth and that the thazhampu would not be used in Shiva worship. The place where Shiva stood as light is Tiruvannamalai, and tradition says that day was Maha Shivaratri. The temple is also honoured as the origin of the Lingodbhava form.

There is a story of the goddess too. When Uma playfully covered Shiva's eyes, the whole world fell into darkness, the puranam says. To atone, she came to Tiruvannamalai at Shiva's bidding and did penance with the help of the sage Gautama. On the Karthigai full moon, it is believed, she saw the Lord as light on the hilltop and received the left half of his body. In memory of this, Ardhanareeswarar comes out to give darshan on the Karthigai Deepam day.

The presiding deity, Annamalaiyar, is worshipped as the Agni Lingam. The goddess, Unnamulai Amman, has her own shrine. The sacred tree is the magizham and the temple tank is the Sivaganga.

A ten-day Brahmotsavam is held in the month of Karthigai. At its close the Maha Deepam is lit on the summit of the hill, about 2,668 feet high, and lakhs gather to see it. On every full moon devotees walk the girivalam path of about 14 km around the hill, and the crowd is largest on Chithirai Pournami. Two other festivals are special here: the theerthavari on Masi Magam, recalling the tradition that the Lord himself performed the last rites of King Vallala, and the Thiruvoodal festival in Thai.

Tiruvannamalai is the birthplace of Arunagirinathar. It is also known across the world as the home of saints such as Ramana Maharshi and Seshadri Swamigal, and the Ramanasramam stands at the foot of the hill.

Appar and Sambandar sang of this shrine in the Thevaram, and tradition holds that Manikkavasagar composed the Thiruvempavai here. Arunagirinathar's Thiruppugazh and Ellappa Navalar's Arunachala Puranam also celebrate the place. Inscriptions trace the temple to the Chola period of the 9th century, and it was enlarged by the later Cholas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara rulers and the Nayaks. Work on the eastern rajagopuram began in 1513-14 under Krishnadevaraya and is said to have been completed under Sevappa Nayaka; the tower rises in 11 tiers to about 217 feet. The complex of about 25 acres has nine gopurams, five prakarams and many mandapams. The temple is run by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of Tamil Nadu.