01The elephant and the crocodile
The Bhagavata Purana tells of King Indradyumna, so deep in worship that he did not rise for a passing sage; cursed, he was born an elephant, Gajendra, but kept his devotion. The temple katha sets the rest here. A gandharva named Huhu, cursed for troubling bathers, lived in the tank as a crocodile. When Gajendra came to drink, the crocodile seized his leg, and the elephant, lifting a lotus in his trunk, cried ‘Adimulam’, the first cause. Vishnu came on Garuda and loosed the Sudarshana. Both were freed. Scholars of the sampradaya note that this is the one Divya Desam where the Lord came for an animal.
02The Kannan on the river bank
Thirumazhisai Alvar mentions the place in a single pasuram, ‘aatrankarai kidakkum Kannan’, the Kannan who lies on the river bank, and the sampradaya has long read it as Gajendra Varadar of Kapisthalam. The temple is counted among the Pancha Krishnaranya Kshetrams, five places named for Kannan though Krishna is not the presiding deity in any of them. The Perumal reclines facing east. A granite wall encloses the shrines and tanks, and the Vaikuntha Ekadashi and Brahmotsavam draw the villages along the Kaveri.
The life of this place
- Alvar periodThirumazhisai Alvar sings of the Kannan on the river bank.
About 13 km from Kumbakonam on the Thiruvaiyaru side of the Kaveri. Pullabhoothangudi and Adanur are close and can be seen the same day.
