After eight days in Mamallapuram, I finally left just after noon on the 20th. That morning I had slept late and walked to the beach about 8. The sun was out and all the fishing boats had already come in. Only a few fishermen were still on the sand untangling fish from their nets. I walked along the beach and then along the huge breakwater around the Shore Temple to get to the beach just south of the temple. Hundreds of Indians were already on that very dirty part of the beach. A lone outcrop of rock with ancient bas reliefs on it stood out from the sand.
From Mamallapuram I headed by bus inland, northwest about 40 miles to Kanchipuram, the ancient capital of the Pallavas. The two hour trip passed through flat, green, rice growing terrain, but with small hills along the way. Kanchipuram has something like 200,000 people and is considered one of India's seven holiest cities, with 70 or so temples. It was the Pallava capital from the 4th to 9th centuries and continued to flourish thereafter under succeeding dynasties.
After lunch, I rented a bike (five rupees, less than ten cents, an hour) and about 4 biked just outside the western end of town to the Kailasanatha Temple, built by the Pallavas in the early 8th century. The tower over the sanctuary and some portions of the walls have been excessively restored, but there are many original parts filled with interesting sculpture and bas reliefs. The inner side of the wall surrounding the sanctuary has 58 shrines all along it filled with figures from Shiva stories. On some figures plaster, which covered the stone, remains and there are even traces of paint. Many stone nandis, Shiva's bull, sit in the courtyard. Non-Hindus cannot enter the sanctuary itself.
I spent about an hour and a half looking around and then biked back into town and to the huge Ekambaresvara Temple, with a southern gopura (entrance tower) almost 200 feet high. Most of this temple dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, but some portions from Pallava and Chola times. I walked through the large courtyard to the central Thousand Pillared Hall (supposedly with only 540 pillars, which is still quite a lot) next to a large tank full of water. It was getting dark as I walked first through the entrance portico and then into the long dark (but lit with electric lights) pillared corridors of the temple. Again, the sanctuary at the center is closed to non-Hindus, but I walked to a courtyard near the back with a sacred mango tree in it.
My guidebooks have two different stories about the origin of this temple. One is that Shiva, in his form as Kameshvara, the Lord of Desire, married a local goddess named Kamakshi under the mango tree. Another version is that it celebrates Shiva's consort Parvati making a lingam of earth and as penance worshiping it despite a flood sent to test her. The sanctum is said to contain the lingam of earth.
I thought this temple might be busier at end of day, and there were quite a few worshipers, but not large crowds, there. The altars at the back tended by bare chested brahmin priests weren't very busy. The sanctuary was busier. I biked back in the dark to my hotel sometime after 6:30. That night as I was trying to sleep a large group of pilgrims noisily arrived to spend the night outside in the courtyard next to my room. They banged cooking pots and constantly operated a noisy old fashioned water pump right next to my window. Fortunately, I was able to change rooms.
The next morning about 8:30 I biked back to Kailasanatha just to see it in the morning sunlight. Coming back into town, I passed a man fishing with a long net in a pond. I returned to the Ekambareshvara Temple and looked around until around 11. As I was standing looking into the sanctuary, an angry brahmin priest, thinking I was taking a photo, which is not allowed, started yelling at me. These old brahmin priests can be quite cantankerous, although many are friendly. They are always much lighter skinned than the ordinary population. Tamils are especially dark skinned for Indians. The theory is that Tamils and other relatively dark skinned Indians are the descendants of the Indus River civilizations of 4000 years ago, pushed south by the invasion of the lighter skinned Aryans something like 3500 years ago, who subsequently formed the priestly and warrior castes.
From there I biked to a nearby, smaller, almost deserted, old temple under a grove of trees and then eventually to the Kamakshi Amman Temple, originally Pallava but greatly modified in the 14th and 17th centuries. The sanctuary is closed to non-Hindus, but a painted elephant stood just inside the entrance bestowing blessings to all who would offer a coin, which she would grab with her trunk, bestow the blessing with her trunk on top of the head of the offeror, and then give the coin to her handler.
I walked around the courtyard, passing a large tank full of very green water, and entered a pillared hall, with beautifully carved pillars covered with figures. A gray haired, gap toothed man and his wife, with a small girl with them, asked me to take their photos. They were very friendly. As I was leaving the elephant's handler was feeding her handfuls of some sort of food, dropping it into her trunk. A bunch of friendly, black clad, bare chested male pilgrims asked for photos. The gates to the temple closed about 12:30, but I stood outside watching the pilgrims leave, passing the beggars and a cow at the entrance. Stalls of flower sellers stood all around.
After lunch I biked around town, going to the post office and searching for an internet place, before heading a couple of miles through the busy city streets to the Varadaraja Perumal Temple on the southeast outskirts of town. Biking on the streets of an Indian town is a little harrowing. People pay attention, but there is a lot of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, and there is always a bike or motorcycle, and sometimes even a car, coming along on the wrong side of the street. So you have to pay attention and go slowly.
Inside the high entrance gopura of this walled Vijayanagar era temple is a 96 pillared marriage hall with superbly carved pillars, now marred by an ugly metal fence put up between the outside pillars. At least half the pillars have figures of men, and even some women, mounted on rearing horses. Other pillars have other very interesting and well done figures on them. Again, non-Hindus cannot enter the building with the sanctuary, but I did see a procession of bare chested men in dhotis leave it carrying idols on palanquins. They circled the sanctuary building and then entered another, smaller, temple. Lots of brahmins wearing dhotis and their brahmin threads (a sort of cord worn only by brahmins) across their bare chests came and went. I wandered around, taking photos of pilgrims. A large group, probably from Maharashtra (the men were almost all wearing the distinctive "Gandhi topi," worn by Nehru, which I saw a lot of in Maharashtra) came through.
The pillars of a temple just outside the sanctuary are covered with Krishna stories, including him stealing the clothes of gopis (girls tending cows) while they are bathing. One pillar depicted the oddest act of coitus I have seen yet on an Indian temple, and that is saying a lot. The woman was bent over backwards, with her belly to the sky and both her hands and her feet on the ground. The man, with one hand inserting his penis, was blowing a long curved horn, which he held with his other hand. I biked back to the town center before dark and stopped at one more ancient temple, but it soon was dark, so I headed to my hotel.
The next morning I did bike back to that temple, the Vaikunta Perumal Temple, built by the Pallavas in the 8th century after the Kailasanatha Temple. The sanctuary, with a pyramidal tower on top, is closed to non-Hindus, but the cloisters around the sanctuary can be visited. The cloisters have lion pillars (pillars with carved lions on the lower portions of the pillars) and panels of bas reliefs featuring hundreds, probably more than a thousand, figures. Many are badly worn, but others not. The prevailing theme seems to be the battles between the Pallavas and their enemies the Chalukyas.
I left Kanchipuram shortly before 11 on a bus headed west to Vellore, about 40 miles and less than two hours away. We passed by the town of Arcot, where Clive first made a name for himself in the Carnatic Wars. Vellore is situated below rocky hills and has a large hospital, the Christian Medical Center Hospital, in the center, founded originally as a one room dispensary in 1900 by an American missionary named Ida Scudder. The street in front of the hospital is called Ida Scudder Road. It took me a while to find a hotel with a vacancy, as many were filled with patients and their families.
After a chicken biryani lunch at a friendly little Muslim restaurant, I walked to Vellore's huge 16th century fort, with two sets of walls (with a circumference of, I think, about a mile) and a moat in front, only partly now filled with water. Built by the Vijayanagar Empire, the fort passed into the hands of the sultan of Bijapur in the middle of the 1600's, the Marathas in 1676 and the Moguls in 1708 before the British occupied it in 1762. Inside is a church and a museum of middling interest and a large Vijayanagar era temple. Just inside the outer wall of the temple is another spectacular pillared hall, again with riders on rearing beasts. The beasts seem to be of three kinds: horses, lions or perhaps the fanged yalis, and some sort of animals with lion or dragon heads but with elephant trunks and tusks. Inside the second enclosure brahmin priests were conducting pujas, religious ceremonies, at several altars. I watched several of them, with the priests pouring milk and yogurt over the idols and then washing them off with water, while a drummer and an oboist played. I looked carefully and I am fairly sure it was an oboe and not a traditional Indian instrument. After the ceremonies, the priests carefully dressed their idols and then applied little circles of orange clay here and there on them. In this temple non-Hindus are allowed into the sanctuary, so I went in. Afterwards I walked along the east side of the outer fort walls just before dark and then returned to the Muslim restaurant for another biryani for dinner. About half way through my meal the waiter brought me an extra little piece of chicken.
From Mamallapuram I headed by bus inland, northwest about 40 miles to Kanchipuram, the ancient capital of the Pallavas. The two hour trip passed through flat, green, rice growing terrain, but with small hills along the way. Kanchipuram has something like 200,000 people and is considered one of India's seven holiest cities, with 70 or so temples. It was the Pallava capital from the 4th to 9th centuries and continued to flourish thereafter under succeeding dynasties.
After lunch, I rented a bike (five rupees, less than ten cents, an hour) and about 4 biked just outside the western end of town to the Kailasanatha Temple, built by the Pallavas in the early 8th century. The tower over the sanctuary and some portions of the walls have been excessively restored, but there are many original parts filled with interesting sculpture and bas reliefs. The inner side of the wall surrounding the sanctuary has 58 shrines all along it filled with figures from Shiva stories. On some figures plaster, which covered the stone, remains and there are even traces of paint. Many stone nandis, Shiva's bull, sit in the courtyard. Non-Hindus cannot enter the sanctuary itself.
I spent about an hour and a half looking around and then biked back into town and to the huge Ekambaresvara Temple, with a southern gopura (entrance tower) almost 200 feet high. Most of this temple dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, but some portions from Pallava and Chola times. I walked through the large courtyard to the central Thousand Pillared Hall (supposedly with only 540 pillars, which is still quite a lot) next to a large tank full of water. It was getting dark as I walked first through the entrance portico and then into the long dark (but lit with electric lights) pillared corridors of the temple. Again, the sanctuary at the center is closed to non-Hindus, but I walked to a courtyard near the back with a sacred mango tree in it.
My guidebooks have two different stories about the origin of this temple. One is that Shiva, in his form as Kameshvara, the Lord of Desire, married a local goddess named Kamakshi under the mango tree. Another version is that it celebrates Shiva's consort Parvati making a lingam of earth and as penance worshiping it despite a flood sent to test her. The sanctum is said to contain the lingam of earth.
I thought this temple might be busier at end of day, and there were quite a few worshipers, but not large crowds, there. The altars at the back tended by bare chested brahmin priests weren't very busy. The sanctuary was busier. I biked back in the dark to my hotel sometime after 6:30. That night as I was trying to sleep a large group of pilgrims noisily arrived to spend the night outside in the courtyard next to my room. They banged cooking pots and constantly operated a noisy old fashioned water pump right next to my window. Fortunately, I was able to change rooms.
The next morning about 8:30 I biked back to Kailasanatha just to see it in the morning sunlight. Coming back into town, I passed a man fishing with a long net in a pond. I returned to the Ekambareshvara Temple and looked around until around 11. As I was standing looking into the sanctuary, an angry brahmin priest, thinking I was taking a photo, which is not allowed, started yelling at me. These old brahmin priests can be quite cantankerous, although many are friendly. They are always much lighter skinned than the ordinary population. Tamils are especially dark skinned for Indians. The theory is that Tamils and other relatively dark skinned Indians are the descendants of the Indus River civilizations of 4000 years ago, pushed south by the invasion of the lighter skinned Aryans something like 3500 years ago, who subsequently formed the priestly and warrior castes.
From there I biked to a nearby, smaller, almost deserted, old temple under a grove of trees and then eventually to the Kamakshi Amman Temple, originally Pallava but greatly modified in the 14th and 17th centuries. The sanctuary is closed to non-Hindus, but a painted elephant stood just inside the entrance bestowing blessings to all who would offer a coin, which she would grab with her trunk, bestow the blessing with her trunk on top of the head of the offeror, and then give the coin to her handler.
I walked around the courtyard, passing a large tank full of very green water, and entered a pillared hall, with beautifully carved pillars covered with figures. A gray haired, gap toothed man and his wife, with a small girl with them, asked me to take their photos. They were very friendly. As I was leaving the elephant's handler was feeding her handfuls of some sort of food, dropping it into her trunk. A bunch of friendly, black clad, bare chested male pilgrims asked for photos. The gates to the temple closed about 12:30, but I stood outside watching the pilgrims leave, passing the beggars and a cow at the entrance. Stalls of flower sellers stood all around.
After lunch I biked around town, going to the post office and searching for an internet place, before heading a couple of miles through the busy city streets to the Varadaraja Perumal Temple on the southeast outskirts of town. Biking on the streets of an Indian town is a little harrowing. People pay attention, but there is a lot of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, and there is always a bike or motorcycle, and sometimes even a car, coming along on the wrong side of the street. So you have to pay attention and go slowly.
Inside the high entrance gopura of this walled Vijayanagar era temple is a 96 pillared marriage hall with superbly carved pillars, now marred by an ugly metal fence put up between the outside pillars. At least half the pillars have figures of men, and even some women, mounted on rearing horses. Other pillars have other very interesting and well done figures on them. Again, non-Hindus cannot enter the building with the sanctuary, but I did see a procession of bare chested men in dhotis leave it carrying idols on palanquins. They circled the sanctuary building and then entered another, smaller, temple. Lots of brahmins wearing dhotis and their brahmin threads (a sort of cord worn only by brahmins) across their bare chests came and went. I wandered around, taking photos of pilgrims. A large group, probably from Maharashtra (the men were almost all wearing the distinctive "Gandhi topi," worn by Nehru, which I saw a lot of in Maharashtra) came through.
The pillars of a temple just outside the sanctuary are covered with Krishna stories, including him stealing the clothes of gopis (girls tending cows) while they are bathing. One pillar depicted the oddest act of coitus I have seen yet on an Indian temple, and that is saying a lot. The woman was bent over backwards, with her belly to the sky and both her hands and her feet on the ground. The man, with one hand inserting his penis, was blowing a long curved horn, which he held with his other hand. I biked back to the town center before dark and stopped at one more ancient temple, but it soon was dark, so I headed to my hotel.
The next morning I did bike back to that temple, the Vaikunta Perumal Temple, built by the Pallavas in the 8th century after the Kailasanatha Temple. The sanctuary, with a pyramidal tower on top, is closed to non-Hindus, but the cloisters around the sanctuary can be visited. The cloisters have lion pillars (pillars with carved lions on the lower portions of the pillars) and panels of bas reliefs featuring hundreds, probably more than a thousand, figures. Many are badly worn, but others not. The prevailing theme seems to be the battles between the Pallavas and their enemies the Chalukyas.
I left Kanchipuram shortly before 11 on a bus headed west to Vellore, about 40 miles and less than two hours away. We passed by the town of Arcot, where Clive first made a name for himself in the Carnatic Wars. Vellore is situated below rocky hills and has a large hospital, the Christian Medical Center Hospital, in the center, founded originally as a one room dispensary in 1900 by an American missionary named Ida Scudder. The street in front of the hospital is called Ida Scudder Road. It took me a while to find a hotel with a vacancy, as many were filled with patients and their families.
After a chicken biryani lunch at a friendly little Muslim restaurant, I walked to Vellore's huge 16th century fort, with two sets of walls (with a circumference of, I think, about a mile) and a moat in front, only partly now filled with water. Built by the Vijayanagar Empire, the fort passed into the hands of the sultan of Bijapur in the middle of the 1600's, the Marathas in 1676 and the Moguls in 1708 before the British occupied it in 1762. Inside is a church and a museum of middling interest and a large Vijayanagar era temple. Just inside the outer wall of the temple is another spectacular pillared hall, again with riders on rearing beasts. The beasts seem to be of three kinds: horses, lions or perhaps the fanged yalis, and some sort of animals with lion or dragon heads but with elephant trunks and tusks. Inside the second enclosure brahmin priests were conducting pujas, religious ceremonies, at several altars. I watched several of them, with the priests pouring milk and yogurt over the idols and then washing them off with water, while a drummer and an oboist played. I looked carefully and I am fairly sure it was an oboe and not a traditional Indian instrument. After the ceremonies, the priests carefully dressed their idols and then applied little circles of orange clay here and there on them. In this temple non-Hindus are allowed into the sanctuary, so I went in. Afterwards I walked along the east side of the outer fort walls just before dark and then returned to the Muslim restaurant for another biryani for dinner. About half way through my meal the waiter brought me an extra little piece of chicken.
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