This island of Srirangam is best known for its huge temple for Ranganatha Swami (Vishnu) which is the world’s biggest living temple. However, there are several other shrines in Srirangam, one of them being the Dasavatara Sannidhi, which is close to the Ranganatha Swami temple.
There are temples exclusively dedicated to each of the incarnations (avataras) of Vishnu, even to the first two Matsya (fish) and Kurma (tortoise) in various parts of India. But, it is rare to find a temple which enshrines all the ten incarnations (Dasavatara) of Vishnu, including Matsya and Kurma. The Dasavatara temple, as the name suggests, falls in this rare category, and is perhaps one of the very few where devotees can worship the ten incarnations inside one sanctum.
The main entrance, with a small gopuram, and the central sanctum face east. On entering, one has to pass through two mandapas to reach the principal shrine, which contains the Dasavataras in a row. A rare feature is that the images of Matsya and Kurma are seen in their original forms as a fish and a tortoise respectively and not in their anthropomorphic forms (with the upper part of the body being Vishnu and the lower parts being a fish or tortoise respectively). The images of all the avataras are instone.
In front of the avataras are those of Lakshmi Narasimha, Lakshmi Narayana and Vishvaksena (also called Senai Mudaliar, who is the leader of the army of Vishnu). While those of Lakshmi Narasimha and Vishvaksena are stone images, Lakshmi Narayana is of metal. The front mandapa houses of the sanctums for Thirumangai Azhvar (whose close connection with the Srirangam temple is well known) and one more for the illustrious Sri Vaishnava preceptor (Acharya), Ramanujacharya, who was also very closely connected with the Ranganatha Swami temple. The Dasavatara temple has a spacious outer enclosure (prakaram) wherein is seen the sanctum for Vedanta Desika (another famous Sri Vaishnava Acharya) who was a great poet, philosopher and scholar and whose extant literary works number more than one hundred.
Chithra Madhavan
cityexpresschn@gmail.com
The writer is a historian who focuses on temple architecture