Can dreams be considered a mode of communication? Sometimes dreams predict our future, sometimes fragments of our past. Sometimes they lead to random visuals, clear our queries and give us insights. How about a dream where a divine being communicated with a human, that being a command from the Almighty?
This is an extremely important inscription that documents a divine intervention, through a dream that a king had. It brings together two events that happened in the northern and southern extremes of India around the same time. A temple was plundered and that occasion was used to showcase the immortal greatness of a devotee who was also a king.
Around the 1440s, the sacred city of Varanasi was again ransacked, this time by the army of the Delhi sultanate. It was the time when Mubbarak Shah, the sultan of the Sayid dynasty, was killed by his nephew Muhammad Shah with the help of Ul Mulk. Later it was an army under Ul Mulk that marched to the sacred city to loot and plunder it. One of the most ancient surviving cities with deep-rooted culture and traditions was attacked and many temples were demolished. The most important shrine of Kashi, that of Sri Vishwanatha, too was not spared.
The southern part of India that had witnessed such scenarios almost a century ago (14th century CE) was rebuilding itself then. The Pandya kings, ardent devotees of Siva as they have always been, had fled Madurai and by then had settled in a town closer to the Western Ghats and were ruling from there. In this devout lineage was born a king named Ko Jatilavarman Parakrama Pandyan who ascended the throne in 1422 CE. The city that he ruled from was on the banks of Chithra River. His glorious rule extended for a period of 41 years till 1463 CE. It was this king who the Almighty Vishwanatha chose to build a city that could be called the Kashi of the south or Tenkasi.
This grand temple of Siva as Sri Vishwanatha stands tall with an imposing gopuram that dominates the skyline of the town of Tenkasi. It is a temple that must be visited for several important reasons. The town has developed around the temple with a socio-religious ecosystem that was defined as early as the 15th-16th century CE. The temple-building activities have been meticulously documented through inscriptions that are etched on the walls of the shrine. The first inscription in fact narrates the divine dream that the king had.
“As the shrine of Siva Vishwanatha at Utthara Kashi was demolished, Siva commanded our King, Perumal Arikesari Thevar alias Ponnin Perumal Parakrama Pandya Thevar, in his dream, to construct a temple for him at Thennari Nadu, on the banks of Chithra river and consider it as Dakshina Kashi. ...”
This shows that the news of the Kashi temple being destroyed had by then reached the far south, and had caused distress to the devout even in this part of the country. Demolition of temples by enemy rulers was not new to South India, which had already witnessed them, but the pain that this must have caused the king probably bothered him so much that it culminated in the dream and led to the temple construction that began in 1446.
The inscription goes on to mention the day and date that this command was received and how the king made it a reality. He commissioned his architects and advisors to chart out a plan to design the temple as suggested in traditional code books. A series of inscriptions describes the milestone events in the process of construction. That includes the day the temple building started, the day on which the moola lingam was installed in the sanctum, the day the entrance was erected and the day the gopuram construction started.
The king however died a year before the completion of the gopuram. This was later completed and the temple consecrated by his brother Kulasekara Pandya. The sudden demise of this devout king did have an impact on the court poets, which they expressed in a very poetic fashion. “Where did Parakrama Pandya reach? Did he leave us to be amongst the 63 canonised devotees of Siva? Did he merge in the silver anklets of Siva? Or probably the Golden Hall of Chidambaram? Did he dissolve in the Vedic scriptures? Sivalokam? Or got embedded on to the holy feet of Sri Vishwanatha?” Indeed, he must have reached the holy feet of his Lord, but the temple he left behind stands a silent sentinel speaking to us of his love for the Lord of Kashi.
Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan
Architect, serves on the govt-instituted panel for conservation of temples in TN
(madhu.kalai0324@gmail.com)