The Kanchipuram series - Part 1 - Sri Varadharaja perumal temple

My parents recently moved to Kanchipuram giving me the opportunity to visit them and thereby this holy town of Kanchipuram, well known for its several temples and stunning silk sarees!! So this time around when they visited we decided to drop them and take a day trip to this divine city and visit atleast one of the temples!!

Having lived in Chennai all my life, I have visited this town for the first time in my life and to say the least I was stunned by the marvels we have so near our own city which I am not sure many of us have seen and appriciated enough and have jumped out to the various wonders of world. Being big on slow travel we dicided we will get ample opportunity to revisit this place and all the other temples but lets visit and take in one temple at a time and for the first time it was Sri Varadharaja Perumal temple.

So we started our day post breakfast on a saturday morning and it took us two hours to reach the retirement community which my parents now call thier home. post settling down and bidding our goodbyes we headed to Sri Varadharaja perumal temple, one of the most auspicious temples of lord vishnu and a very sacred temple for the Vaishnavites as this also happens to be one of the 108 Divya Desams.

The history of this temple dates back to the times of Lord Brahma, its believed that Lord Brahma himself did a yagna here and worshipped lord vishnu. The Utsava Murty of this temple is said to have appeared from this Yagna. It is also believed that the Mulavar (Main Deity of this temple) was carved out of wood from a fig tree way back in Satyayuga right after lord Brahma performed this yagna. This was the deity which was worshipped until the Mughal invasion and after that like all the other ancient temples in this region this temple too came under attack and the main idol made of fig wood was hidden in a safe place and an identical replica was created out of granite stone to worship here. 40 long years passed as the devotees who hid the original deity passed away taking the secret with them and the deity made of stone was installed as the official deity. 40 years later once when the same temple tank was empetied the original deity made of Fig (Athi) wood was discovered. Thereon it became a tradition to take out the Athi Varadhar once every 40 years for a span of 48 days and is placed specially so that people can visit and seek blessings. During these 48 days he can be worshipped in forms where he stands as well as is lying down (The last time this Idol was taken out was in the year 2019, so the next turn is going to be only the year 2059.)

The temple itself is easily more than 1000 years old. The temples which stands today was built by around 1053 AD, initiated by Raja Raja Chola 1, which means both this temple and the Bhrideeshwara temple in Tanjore were probably constructed around the same time. Apart from the spiritual significance this temple too is a sheer architectural marvel. The pictures that follow would be testimony to that.

While a lot of devotees would talk about the golden lizard which you would find on the tower housing the main idol of Varadharaja swamy and touching it would relive you of all the sins. The temple also houses many many more architectural marvels one of them being the hanging stone chain which hangs down on the corners of the 100 pillared hall which is believed to have been carved out of a single stone. How on earth could they have achieved this? really!!

This looped chain was carved out of a single rock!! how on earth!!

The 100 pillared hall itself is another marvel which I missed entering this time due to lack of time but hope to cover this next time. Though I dont really know about the legend of this temple fully, I have shared what little knowledge and information i gathered from sources online and people I know. Do feel free to add in the comments any information that needs to be corrected or added!!