01Lanka in the Tantra
The Peetha Nirnaya Tantra says Sati’s anklets fell in Lanka, where the Devi is Indrakshi and the Bhairava Rakshaseshwar. It does not name a town. Many devotees in Jaffna and South India identify that seat with Nagapooshani Amman at Nainativu, and call her Bhairava Nayinar, the Shiva of the island. Others place the Lanka peetha at Trincomalee, where Shankari Devi beside Koneswaram is counted first among the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas. Shakti Peetha lists differ, and both shrines are honoured. The island’s Tamil name means the island of the Nayinar, and the naga is everywhere in the temple, coiled above the Devi and carved on its pillars.
02Broken and raised again
The Portuguese, who held Jaffna in the early 17th century, destroyed the old temple in 1620. Devotees raised it again between about 1720 and 1790, and it has grown ever since. Four gateway towers of twenty to twenty-five feet stand on the four sides, and the eastern Raja Raja Gopuram rises to 108 feet; the renovated temple is reckoned to hold about ten thousand sculptures. The great festival is the sixteen-day Mahotsavam in the Tamil month of Aani, June to July, when more than a lakh of pilgrims cross by boat. A short walk away is Nagadeepa, a Buddhist vihara that Sinhala Buddhists honour as a place the Buddha visited, and pilgrims of both come on the same ferries.
The life of this place
- 1620The Portuguese destroy the old temple.
- c. 1720–1790The temple is built again on the island.
Drive from Jaffna across the causeways to the Kurikadduwan jetty on Punkudutivu, then take the short ferry to Nainativu. Go early in Aani if you want to see the festival; the boats are full by mid-morning.
