01The nine rivers
The rivers of Bharat, the temple’s katha says, carry the sins of all who bathe in them. The nine great ones, Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, Narmada, Godavari, Kaveri, Mahanadi, Payoshni and Sarayu, asked Shiva how they might be cleansed. He told them to bathe in the Mahamaham tank at Kumbakonam when Jupiter is in Simha and the moon in Magha. The Nava Kanniyar, the nine river maidens, stand in a shrine of their own in this temple, the only one of its kind, and the tank lies at its door. Shri Rama, the temple says, also worshipped here.
02Mahamaham
Sambandar sang the shrine as Kudanthai Karonam. Every twelve years at the Mahamaham, the latest in February 2016, lakhs bathe in the tank, and the deities of Kumbakonam’s Shiva temples, Kasi Viswanathar among them, come to its banks for the tirthavari. Each year’s Masi Magam is the smaller form of the same festival. The present temple, with its seven-tiered western gopuram about 72 feet high, is Nayaka work of the sixteenth century.
The life of this place
- February 2016The most recent Mahamaham is held at the tank beside the temple.
On the north bank of the Mahamaham tank in Kumbakonam, about 2 km from the railway station.
