Written by london swaminathan

swami_48@yahoo.com

Date: 4 April 2019

British Sumer Time uploaded in London – 21-29

Post No. 6226

Pictures shown here are taken from various sources including google, Wikipedia, Facebook friends and newspapers. This is a non- commercial blog. ((posted by swamiindology.blogspot.com AND tamilandvedas.com))

There are 108 Divya Desams, i.e. holy temples of Lord Vishnu in India. Out of the 108, 14 temples are in Kanchipuram. This is the highest number in a singe place.  There is another fact which place Kanchi ahead of other holy places. There are over 108 temples in Kanchipuram alone. It was the capital city of the mighty Pallava Dynasty who ruled for 600 years. They were the pioneers of cave temples in Tamil Nadu. The temple is under the control of archaeology department.

The Palava Temples can be easily identified by their lion pillars. In Kanchipuram there are two famous Pallava Temples and one of them is Vaikunta Perumal temple. Since I have already visited other famous temples such as Kailasanatha, Kamakshi Amman, Ekmpareswar, Chitra Gupta, kumara kottam , Sankaracharya Mutt, I made it a point to visit only temples not seen before during my March 2019 visit,

I will give some interesting information in bullet points:-

Location:-

Not far from Kanchipuram Railway station and Bus stand.

Names of God and Goddess:-

God-Sri Vaikunta Perumal

Goddess – Vaikunha valli Thayar

Vimanam Type- Mukunda Vmanam

Shrine is in three tiers with Lord Vishnu in three poses.

Architecture and Sculptures

There are beautiful sculptures of Pallava Period. It is also known as Parameswara Vinngaram

Inscriptions and sculptures here tell us the story of Palava Dynasty. It gives full information of King Nandivarman of Pallava dynasty.

Mythological story:-

King Virosana of Vidarbha Desa had no issues for a long time. He prayed to Lord Kailasanatha of Kanchi and he had two sons. Lord Vishnu’s gate keepers/ Dwara Palakas were born as Pallavan and Villvan as sons to the king. They did Aswamedha yajna and Lord Vishnu appeared before them and the same pose can be seen even today.

Golden Rain

An amazing amount of gold is donated to gods in this shrine:-

The temple has inscriptions of eighth century .

Abhimanasiddhi alias Pallavan donated a bowl and image made up of 1000 gold coins.

During Dantivarman period (812 CE) a bowl weighing 10,000 kazanju was donated to the god.

Avani Chandra donated 3000 kazanju gold to the temple.

Thiruvarangan Manikkam donated lands to feed the  Vaishnavas attending a festival.

This temple was Sung by Tirumangai Azvar – Verses 1128-1137

–subham–