Meenakshi Amman Temple

Overview

The Meenakshi Amman Temple is a Hindu temple complex in the city of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, southern India. It is dedicated to the goddess Meenakshi, a form of the goddess Parvati, and to Sundareswarar, a form of the god Shiva. The temple is an active place of daily worship, and its annual Chithirai festival, which celebrates the divine wedding of the two deities, draws over a million pilgrims to Madurai.

Present

The Meenakshi Amman Temple is managed by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu. It is an active temple with six rounds of worship conducted daily. Each night, in the Palliyarai ceremony, an image of Sundareswarar is carried in procession to Meenakshi's chamber. The temple's principal festival is the Chithirai festival, held in the Tamil month of Chithirai (April to May). Its central event is the Meenakshi Thirukalyanam, the ritual celebration of the divine wedding of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar, accompanied by processions in which the deities' images are drawn through the surrounding streets on temple cars. The festival draws over a million pilgrims each year. The temple is also reconsecrated periodically in a ceremony called Kumbhabhishekam.

Religious Significance

The Meenakshi Amman Temple is dedicated to the goddess Meenakshi and to the god Shiva in his local form as Sundareswarar. Hindu tradition holds that Meenakshi, a form of the goddess Parvati, was born as the daughter of a king of the Pandya dynasty, which ruled Madurai, that she ruled the city as its queen, and that she married Shiva there. The temple marks the place where Hindu tradition holds the wedding took place, and the divine couple is worshipped as the ruling pair of Madurai. Meenakshi, not her consort, is the principal deity of the temple, and worship centers on her shrine. Devotees come for darshan, the act of viewing the image of a deity, which Hindus regard as a form of worship and blessing. The annual Meenakshi Thirukalyanam, in which the wedding of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar is celebrated anew, is the temple's most important religious event and draws pilgrims from across India.

History & Structure

The Meenakshi Amman Temple is first mentioned in Tamil texts of the 6th century CE. Its early structures were built under the Pandya dynasty between the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1310 the temple was sacked and largely destroyed by the armies of the Delhi Sultanate, a Muslim empire based in northern India. Rebuilding began in the 14th century under the Vijayanagara Empire, and the complex reached its present form under the Nayak rulers of Madurai in the 16th and 17th centuries, above all under Tirumalai Nayak, who ruled from 1623 to 1655. The walled complex covers about 6 hectares in the center of Madurai, and the city's streets are laid out in concentric squares around it. Fourteen gopurams, monumental gateway towers covered in brightly painted stucco figures, rise above the complex; the tallest, the southern tower, was built in the 16th century and reaches 52 meters. Inside are pillared halls, among them the Thousand Pillar Hall, the shrines of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar, and the Golden Lotus tank, a rectangular temple pool.

Additional Resources

• Book: Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South Indian Temple by C. J. Fuller (1984)