Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

The history of the holy place srirangam is thousands of years old. To explain it, One has to look backward the history of entire tamilnadu where an advancement in civilization was seen. The inscriptions of this place gives in formation about the life style of tribal who where living here quite long before, Aryans entered the Asian subcontinent-india. Initially chola’s domination was seen, when Trade relationship of tamilnadu was good with many south Asian countries especially with china. Chola’s were the barriers to mauryas to stop entering them. That period dates to 3 BC. Later, Guptas and chalukyas were dominant. out of chalukkyas pulikesi II was a diplomatic dictator.  Architectural beauties were a dream in those days.  But pallavas, By start of 4th century made it real. Their excellence could be seen in temples like Mahabalipuram in Chennai and Rockfort temple of Trichy .

Chola’s of Thanjavur again came in to the scene by 9th century and built many important temples. The Brahadishwara temple of Thanjavur built by RajaRaja chola and the Gangaikonda cholapuram temple Built by his son Rajendra chola are best examples. Chola dynasty end up in 14th century and then pandyas took charge. Pandyas even though were capable of with standing the encounters from mugal emperors; at last sinked. But mugal empire was not seen for more years, as Vijayanagar Empire started up. They started ruling their region individually from 1602 AD. After wards the Portuguese entered and were ruling fore some years. Even though Portuguese, French, Dutch and Britishers wanted to capture the region and also the whole country, it was English men who were ruling the country for more than three centuries till independence.

Srirangam Origin and Development

The vimana of srirangam temple originally came out of “parkadal” with the powers of brahma dava. The incarnation of lord Vishnu called Ramavathara has performed poojas to this vimana. But as a symbol of love he gifted this vimana to vibishana (brother of Ravana). With a condition, to not to keep that on earth. While he took this vimana and was traveling towards srilanka, lord vinayaka played a trick and made that to stick on the region now called srirangam, on the banks of river cauvery. Then chola kings namely dharmavarcholan and killivalavan developed the shrine into big temple seen now. They have laid the Basic foundations and primary Buildings.

Srirangam Temple is located at 10’52 Degrees North and 78’43 Degrees East in Between the Rivers cauvery and kolidam. There are seven wall streets around this temple called as the saptha prakarams. This is the only temple in world to have seven prakarams. The area of this temple is 156 sq km and Round about area is nearly 10710 sq feet.

Out of seven prakarams four are seen inside the temple and three are outside. They are namely Uthra Street, Chitra Street and Adayavalanjan Street. There is a large tower on the south side called Rajagopuram which is the highest temple tower of south asia. Including that there are totally 26 Gopurams (Towers) on the four sides of Temples. There are totally three entrances for this temple. South, North and East entrances are those. There is a full fledged Transportation arrangement to visit this place and so Buses are available 24 hours a day. Other important sannathis (Temples) in srirangm temples other than perumal (the principal deity) are namely.

(a) Thayar sannathi
(b) Chakkarathazwar sannathi
(c) Udayavar (Ramanujar sannathi)
(d) Garudalwar Sannathi
(e) Veliandal Sannathi
(f) Ul Andal Sannathi

But totally there are 53 additional small temples called upa-sannathis this in this large temple complex called srirangam.