01The whirl
Chuzhi is a whirlpool. The temple’s katha says that when the flood of the pralaya rose, Shiva drew the waters into a whirl here and they sank into the earth, and so the Lord is also called Bhoominathar, Lord of the earth. Sundarar sang Tiruchuzhiyal in the seventh Tirumurai, and the shrine is counted among the fourteen Tevaram temples of the Pandya country. The Devi is Thunaimalaiammai, and the temple also keeps a shrine of Pralayavitankar, the Lord who stilled the deluge. Its tank, the Pralaya tirtham, is the town’s centre.
02Ramana’s birthplace
On 30 December 1879, on the night of Arudra darshanam, when the Nataraja of this temple was being taken round the streets, a son was born to Sundaram Iyer and Azhagammal in a house near the temple. They named him Venkataraman. At sixteen he went to Arunachala, and the world knows him as Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi. The house, Sundara Mandiram, is kept by the Ramanasramam and is open to pilgrims, a few steps from the temple he was taken to as a child.
The life of this place
- 30 December 1879Ramana Maharshi is born in Tiruchuzhi on the night of Arudra darshanam.
On the Virudhunagar–Manamadurai road, about 45 km south of Madurai via Aruppukottai.
