Arunachaleswarar Temple, Tiruvannamalai

Shiva as a column of fire

A story told in the Puranas explains Tiruvannamalai. Brahma and Vishnu quarrelled over who was greater, and Shiva appeared between them as an endless column of fire. Vishnu dived down as a boar and Brahma flew up as a swan, and neither found its end. The hill of Arunachala is worshipped as that fire, and the temple is one of the five Pancha Bhuta Sthalams, the shrine of the element fire. The Shaiva poets of the Tevaram sang of it in the 7th century.

Ten hectares of stone

The present temple was begun under the Cholas in the 9th century and grew for some seven hundred years. Hoysala, Vijayanagara and Nayak rulers added enclosure walls, halls and towers until the complex covered about ten hectares. Four great gopurams mark the compass points; the eastern rajagopuram, 66 metres and eleven storeys tall, is among the tallest in India. The thousand-pillared hall dates from the Vijayanagara period. In the 1890s the young Ramana Maharshi meditated in an underground shrine within the temple, before living on the hill for the rest of his life.

The festival of light

On the full-moon day of the Tamil month of Karthigai (November-December), a huge beacon is lit on the summit of Arunachala, visible for miles. Hundreds of thousands walk the girivalam, the 14 km circuit of the hill, barefoot and clockwise, on that night and on every full moon. The temple is run by the HR&CE Department.