01Five colours in a day
Panchavarna means five colours. The temple says that to the sage Udanga the Lord appeared through the day as five lingas, of gem, crystal, gold, diamond and many hues, and Udanga’s shrine faces the sanctum. The linga itself is small, no bigger than a palm. Uraiyur’s other name, Kozhiyur, the town of the cock, comes from a katha carved on the sanctum wall and on a pillar: a Chola king’s elephant ran amok in the streets, and a cock, given strength by Shiva’s glance, flew at its head and drove it off. Kanthimathi holds a goad and a lotus in her south-facing shrine, and a fierce Jayakali stands in the inner court. Sambandar’s hymn on Tirumukkeeswaram is in the second Tirumurai.
02The old capital
Uraiyur was the seat of the early Chola kings, and the Periya Puranam remembers it as the city of Pugazh Chola Nayanar, the king who, finding among the enemy dead a head with the matted locks of a Shiva devotee, gave up his throne and entered the fire with it. The temple’s eight inscriptions were copied in 1907; one, of the seventh year of Rajaraja I, places the town in Uraiyur-kurram, and another records the gift of a village for the temple’s upkeep. Two tall dvarapalas guard the ardhamandapa, and the outer wall of the sanctum shows several of Shiva’s tandavas. The temple stands hidden behind shops in the busy heart of Uraiyur.
In Uraiyur, central Tiruchirappalli, a few minutes from the Vekkaliamman temple and close to the Azhagiya Manavalar Divya Desam.
