Kalady

01The crocodile in the Purna

The Periyar here is called the Purna. The Shankara Digvijaya tells how the boy Shankara, already set on sannyasa, could not get his widowed mother’s consent. One day while he bathed, a crocodile seized his leg. He called to Aryamba that he would die unless she let him renounce the world, and she agreed; the crocodile let go. Before leaving he promised to come to her at her last hour, wherever he was, and he kept that promise, performing her last rites himself. The bathing ghat is still shown as Muthalakadavu, the crocodile ghat.

02Shrines of the twentieth century

For long Kalady was a quiet village with a family shrine of Krishna said to be the one Aryamba worshipped. In 1910 the Jagadguru of Sringeri, Sri Sacchidananda Shivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati, consecrated two shrines here, to Shankara and to Sharadamba, and the Sringeri Math has kept them since, with a Vedic school beside. In 1978 the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham opened the Adi Shankara Keerthi Sthambha, an octagonal tower of nine storeys whose walls tell his life in pictures, from Kalady to the four mathas.

The life of this place