Thiruvonum's Weblog

During the period of the Noble and great azhwars, this temple was as as big as a castle. It is believed that the King who constructed the Siva temple in tanjore (saying nowadays periya koil) must have destroyed the thanjai mamanikkoil without leaving any evidence. The divyadesam which exists there now in vennatragarai was built by swami lakshmi kumarar ( thathacharyar) replacing the destroyed temple after a few decades.

We had an opportunity to visit the divyadesam , which was destroyed by the king near vennatrakari. The holy place dating back to the period of Azhwars is Still named as Vembulansolai near vannatrangarrai but the exact place where the temple existed is named as “RAAJA KURI“. This very big temple must have irritated our beloved king hence it might have been renamed as RAAJAKURI”.

This Raja kuri (alwar’s thanjai mamani koil) is a 10 to 12 acres ground with dashed bushes and trees everywhere. One can see small temples having Vishnu’s idol in the vimana around that ground.
Adding more pain to the feelings of Vaishnavites, this place raajakuri was deliberately converted to a cremation ground to avoid people visiting or exploring the place (guess so that the king himself must have built the cremation dooms to avoid reconstruction ). I have seen so many rudra boomi (cremation area) but this is some what different. The cremation ground was surrounded by Vishnu temples which gives room for a strong thought that this must have been made by someone.

Before that ground lies a very big pond (pushkarni) constructed according to Agama shashtram. I guess so (truth) that our manikundra perumal must have had many tepporthsawams in that pushkarani. It is very painful to learn that now people are using that pushkarani for ceremonies.

My assumption is that the great pillars and stones might have been reused to build the new very big siva temple (guess what is that). The king must have seized that place and removed all Vishnu idols and temples.
For all Vaishnavas there cannot be a stronger evidence than the Azhwar’s Pasuram to say that there existed a huge Vishnu Temple

1. The pushkarani was built with agama shashtra for conducting uthsawa…
2. The cremation ground need not be surrounded by temples.
3. For cremation only one or two cremation dooms are enough. But here some sequence of dooms with stone mandapam are found then and there.
4. the small temples ( some what big ) are surrounded by that ground having a peculiar architecture. The vimanam bears Vishnu avathara idols but the devatha inside that temple is Lord siva.
5. Finally alwar pasuram : Alwar pasuram is the most powerful evidence for all of us. Alwar represents this temple as “Thanjai Mamani koil” and “ma mathil thanjai”.
   “MA” in the sense “very very big”. This temple had saptha prakara and very big stone walls.