01The city of the cock
The Sangam poets call Uraiyur the seat of the Cholas, with Puhar, Kaveripattinam, as their port at the river’s mouth. Karikala, greatest of the early Cholas, ruled from here. The city was also called Kozhiyur, the town of the cock, from a katha that a cock here fought and drove off a royal elephant, and the Chola kings took that as a sign that the ground made even the weak brave. Ptolemy’s Geography, in the 2nd century, names Orthoura as the royal city of the Sorai, the Cholas. When the imperial Cholas rose in the 9th century they built a new capital at Thanjavur, but Uraiyur kept its temples.
02Temples of Uraiyur
The Azhagiya Manavalan temple, a Divya Desam, honours Kamalavalli Nachiyar, a Chola princess who by the temple katha married Shri Ranganatha of Srirangam across the river; here the Devi is the chief deity. Tiruppan Alvar, the singer of the Panar community who was carried into the Srirangam sanctum on the shoulders of a priest, was born at Uraiyur. The Panchavarnaswamy temple, sung in the Tevaram, is of Shiva who showed five colours to a sage. The Vekkali Amman temple has no roof over the Devi, for the katha says she chose to stand under the open sky like her people.
The life of this place
- Sangam ageUraiyur was the capital of the early Chola kings, Karikala among them.
- c. 150 CEPtolemy recorded Orthoura as the royal city of the Cholas.
