Kudamadukoothan Temple, Thiru Arimeya Vinnagaram (Thirunangur)

01The pot dance

Tamil devotional poetry remembers a dance of Krishna in which he played with pots, tossing and balancing them, the kudakkoothu. Thirumangai Alvar, seeing the Perumal of this temple, called him Kudamadukoothan, the one who dances with the pot, and the name stayed. The image in the sanctum is seated facing east with his feet resting on a pot. The Vedamodha Vimanam rises above him. The temple katha says the sage Uthanka worshipped here. Like the other Thirunangur shrines, it belongs to the katha of Vishnu’s eleven forms taken at Shiva’s request.

02The temple

Thirumangai Alvar sings of Arimeya Vinnagaram in a decad of ten pasurams; vinnagaram, a heavenly city, is the name the Alvars gave to several Vishnu temples of the Chola delta. The festival image is a four-armed Gopalan in panchaloha, with Amritakadavalli. A three-tiered gopuram stands at the entrance, the tank is to the north, and the paddy fields come up to the walls. At the Thai Amavasai festival this Perumal joins the other ten on Garuda at Thirunangur. In the eighteenth century Divya Kavi Pillai Perumal Aiyangar named the temple in his 108 Tirupati Antati.

The life of this place