Sri Kamakshi Amman Temple
For this special darshan and puja, we again left the house at 5:30 am to walk to the Kamakshi Amman temple, walking distance from my friend’s house.
Kamakshi is the goddess of Kanchipuram. In fact many girls that are born in Kanchipuram are named Kamakshi, which means eyes full of love. These girls can affectionately be called ‘Kanchi Kamakshi’.
This temple was built by the kings of the Chola empire in 14 A.D., is the hub of all religious activities in Kanchipuram Here, Kamakshi is in her Padmasana posture, holding a bow of sugarcane and arrows of flowers in her hands. This ancient temple is associated with Saint Adi Shankara, as there is one room fully dedicated to Adi Shankara in this temple. Many years ago, Kamakshi came out of the temple in the form of Kali and created much havoc in the city. People became alarmed, and Adi Shankara who prayed devotedly to Kamakshi appeased her wrath and extracted a promise that she would not go out to the temple without his permission. Even today, the temple seeks permission from an Acharya from Adi Shankara’s Mutt before the devi can leave her shrine to attend processions and other holy functions.
The Kamakshi goddess is housed in the middle of a building dedicated to the goddess. The graba graha for Kamakshi is a separate, enclosed room inside the building. This room is rectangular and one side of it has an opening that has the idol or murthi of Kamakshi. It is situated in such a way that the goddess is seated in the middle of the graba graha and can be seen by those sitting inside as well as those standing in the building outside the grabha graha. We were not permitted to take photos inside, so my description is purely from memory. As we sat in the graba graha, we were able to see the Kamakshi murthi and also able to see out through an opening in the wall to the devotees standing out side of the shrine waiting for blessings from the pujari. In front of the grabha graha there was a gated area. The gate protruded about 6-10 feet in front of the entire grabha graha, except where the Kamakshi murthi was. At the place Kamakshi stood, the gated area protruded out another few feet and this was the place the pujari would go out to give blessings after pujas were completed.
It is within this gated area that we saw a few temple cows and a baby elephant. All devotees, in the special puja and generally visiting the temple, were able to take blessings from the animals and feed them some prasadam, which included bananas. The elephants in this slide were actually resting and getting bathed after the pujas in an open-aired and shaded part of the temple, where they spend most of their time greeting the devotees. In fact in many temples in Tamil Nadu it is common to see a ‘cow shed’ and other shelters housing other temple animals, including elephants.
Returning back to the morning schedule, after getting the blessings of the temple cows and elephants, we started the puja. Pujari took our names for archana. My friends gave me the name ‘Jayashree’ which was used for all the archanas. After archana, they did abhishekam. In the abhishekam they bathed Kamakshi 13 times in this order: water, milk, water, milk, milk, water, water, water, diluted sandal water, water, thick sandal water, thick sandal water, and finally plain water.
Kamakshi murthi is made of black stone. As they bath her with milk, she becomes white. As they bath her with thicker and thicker sandal water and paste, she becomes golden and appears to glow. The sandal water is so thick, we can not see the black stone underneath. At that point, the pujari draws eyebrows on her to open her eyes. This is a magnificent sight. This entire process of bathing takes around 45 minutes.
After abhishekam, pujas were performed to the gods surrounding Kamakshi inside the grabha graha. These murthis are smaller than the main Kamakshi murthi. We were given kum kum or red powder by the pujari, which we place on the forehead of Goddess Lakshmi, Varagalakshmi (this is Goddess Lakshmi with a cow’s face), Ganesha and Vishnu. Upon completing this, all devotees in the grabha graha exited and circled the graba graha thee times, keeping Kamakshi amman to our right. Completing this, we received blessings from pujariji by touching his feet.
If you’d like to read the text in its entirety and see the slide show, join my yahoo group. The slide show is found under the Photo Albums section, titled Kanchipuram slide show. The text is titled “A Spiritual Exploration of Kanchipuram as slide show” in DOC or PDF format. That is found in the files section.
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