Kumbaabishekam
July 16, 2008
This month, Seetharama Sastry who is the chief priest at our yagya facility in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu travelled to the Kumbakonam region further south in order to participate in the installation of the deities into a temple that had been recently renovated.
Since this is a particularly interesting process, I thought I would post some of the photos that he sent me along with some explanations of what happens.
This is the temple, the vertical red stripes are common to all temples in this part of India. Note on the right side of the photo, the smaller temple has scaffolding on it with a platform on the top. The scaffolding is made of long wooden stakes which are tied together with locally made sisal rope. The ladder below is made the same way and you can see that another ladder is on the roof leading up to the platform at the top of the temple itself. Later on, the priests will come up here to pour purified water and milk over the top of the temple as a part of “installing“ the deity in the temple.
