Parantharami Mani

                        On the way from Tiruvotriyur temple I also visited the Kalyana Varadaraja Perumal temple in Kaladipet.  The story goes like this.  In the early 18th century one Mr. Colett was the governor of Fort St.George between 1717to 1719.  He developed a weavers colony in North Madras near Thiruvotriyur called Colettpet which during the course of time became Kaladipet.  The Governor had a very close assistant  by  name Veeraraghava who was an ardent devotee of Lord Varadaraja Perumal of Kancheepuram.  H used to visit Kancheepuram at least twice a week which the Governor did not like. So he gave some funds to Veeraraghava for building a temple in Colettpet for Varadaraja.  He collected some more funds from the public and built the temple in early 18th century.  The templ has a small temple tank also and is visited by hundreds of devotees on weekends which I witnessed...

               Yesterday 9/5/2015 I visited two temples in Thiruvotriyur a suburb of Madras in the north.  The first one was the Vadivudaiyamman TemplE which was recently renovated and Kumbhabhishekam was done 2 months ago.  Thie is a 8th century  temple dedicated to Thiagaraja swami built by the Pallavas .  Over a period of 1200 years the temple has been renovated added by the Cholas, Pandiya and Vijayanagar rulers. The temple has a rich source of inscriptions all around in the walls both in Tamil and Telugu which tells the life and times of those periods and the various donations made to the temple by the kings. The Moolavar is Adhipureeshwarar and the consort is Vadivudaimman who is veneratd by the devotees.  There are 27 lingas representing the 27 stars around the prakara. There are separate temples for Ganesha, Muruga, Annamalai.  There is also a separate shrine for Thiruvotreeswarar in linga form. The main dei...