Chayavaneswarar Temple, Tiruchaikkadu (Sayavanam)

01Indra, Aditi and the elephant’s tusk

Aditi, mother of Indra, came down to earth to worship here. Indra found her gone and resolved to carry the whole temple to svarga for her, setting his elephant Airavata to pull it up. Then the Devi spoke, more sweetly than the koel, and Shiva appeared and told Indra to leave the shrine where it stood. That is why the Devi is Kuyilinum Inmozhi Ammai, she whose speech is sweeter than the koel’s, and where Airavata’s tusk pierced the ground water rose: the Airavata Theertham beside the east gopuram. The sanctum stands on a raised base, the maadakkoil form tradition ties to Kochengat Chola. Tiruvaiyaru, Mayiladuthurai, Tiruvidaimarudur, Tiruvenkadu, Srivanchiyam and Sayavanam are the six held equal to Kashi.

02Iyarpagai Nayanar and the bronzes

Iyarpagai Nayanar, one of the sixty-three, was a merchant of Kaveripattinam who refused nothing to a devotee of Shiva. The Periya Puranam tells how Shiva, disguised as a devotee, asked for his very wife, and Iyarpagai gave her and escorted them with his sword to the edge of the town; there the Lord showed himself with Parvati. The temple keeps his shrine, and holds that he attained mukti here. Its processional Murugan carries a bow instead of the spear. A bronze of the standing Sambandar, photographed here in 1958, was stolen between 1965 and 1975, traced to the National Gallery of Australia, and returned in 2022. Sambandar and Appar each sang two padigams on the shrine.

The life of this place