Chandramouleeswarar Temple, Tiruvakkarai

01Vakrasura and Vakrakali

The temple’s katha says the asura Vakra tormented the rishis of this country until Bhagwan Vishnu slew him, and Shiva’s Shakti, as Kali, slew his sister. The Devi stands in the outer court as Vakrakali, with a garland of skulls and an infant at her ear as an earring, and on the full moon of Chitrai and on amavasya nights her shrine is crowded. The linga in the sanctum has three faces, east, north and south, a form seen in very few Tamil temples. Sambandar sang Tiruvakkarai in the Tevaram.

02Sembiyan Mahadevi’s gift

Sembiyan Mahadevi, the Chola queen who rebuilt many brick shrines of the Tevaram in stone in the tenth century, endowed this temple, and her inscriptions are on its walls. The seven-tiered rajagopuram came later. Unusually, the temple stays open the whole day on amavasya. A few kilometres away, the National Fossil Wood Park of the Geological Survey of India keeps tree trunks turned to stone, some of them lying near the temple’s own land.