01Bhashyakarar’s home
Ramanuja was born here to Asuri Keshava Somayaji and Kantimati. The Adikesava Perumal temple holds his own shrine, where he is worshipped as Bhashyakarar, the author of the Sri Bhashya. The utsava image of him here is called Tamar Ugandha Tirumeni, ‘the form his own people loved’; the sampradaya holds that it was made in his lifetime and that he embraced it and put his power into it before it was sent to his birthplace. His Tiruvadirai nakshatra in the month of Chittirai is kept as his birth festival, the biggest of the year.
02The town today
Sriperumbudur lies on the old road from Chennai to Kanchipuram, and in the last thirty years it has become a factory town. On 21 May 1991 the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed here by an LTTE suicide bomber at an election meeting; a memorial marks the spot. In 2017 the thousandth birth anniversary of Ramanuja drew lakhs of pilgrims, and in February 2022 the Statue of Equality was unveiled in his honour near Hyderabad.
The life of this place
- 1017 CE (Sri Vaishnava tradition)Ramanujacharya was born here.
- 21 May 1991Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at an election meeting here.
- 2017 CEThe thousandth birth anniversary of Ramanuja was celebrated.
About 40 km west of Chennai; the temple is busiest on Ramanuja’s Tiruvadirai in Chittirai (April–May).
