Tiruchendur, temple on the shore
January 3, 2007
One last note of interest about Tiruchendur. It is located, as you can see, right on the ocean. The reason is that here, on this beach, Shiva’s son Subramanyam defeated a demon who interestingly enough started off the attack by taking the form of a mango tree! Probably a good strategy for strength, but a little slow in the midst of battle!
In any case to defeat the demon, who couldn’t be killed during the day or night, nor on land or sea. Well, Subramanyam managed to attack and win the battle at dusk, and on the beach. So the temple is here.
There was a time when the temple was slipping into the water and the erosion of the beach had threatened the foundations of the temple. But the English who were ruling India at the time, shored up the foundations and saved the temple. In one of the main corridors there are a series of images commemorating the event. It is unusual to see images of the English in their 1800’s dress conferring with the temple priests about the repairs.
The recent tsunami caused great destruction up and down this coast of India from Madras all the way to the southern most tip of India at Kanyakumari. But the Tiruchendur temple was undamaged. On scene reports said that the water went out…but never came back in with any degree of force.
Of course the temple history says that Subramanyam made a bargain with the ocean god not to harm his temple. And since it has survived for so long, there may be some truth to that. But I figured let’s take a look at maps.google.com to see what it would look like from space and to see if indeed it was a miracle or…just the fortunate protection of Sri Lanka.
Here is the big view….Thailand on the right and the south-east coast of India on the left. You can see the vast stretch of ocean where the tsunami traveled unstopped. In this view Tiruchendur is unlabeled, but is just south of Madurai. Chennai (Madras) is obviously unprotected and there was a lot of destruction along the coast there.
When you zoom in a bit you can see Sri Lanka, the island on the right. Tiruchendur is on the left the first labeled area up the coast from the southern tip of India, Kanyakumari, at the bottom left.
A closer view shows the city, labeled clearly in the lower left with the coast of SriLanka off to the right. The protection that Sri Lanka offers is pretty obvious!
And one last view, just to see how close to the water the temple is. The temple complex is in the center of the image.
