Parthasarathy, Triplicane

Thiruvallikeni is one of the hundred and eight Divya Desams, and one of the twenty-two that belong to Thondai Nadu. Twelve verses of the Nalayira Divya Prabandham are sung of it — ten by Thirumangai Alvar, one by Thirumazhisai Alvar, and one by Peyalvar, the oldest voice here and the measure of the shrine's antiquity.

The Lord of this place is Krishna at Kurukshetra. Parthasarathy is Partha's charioteer, and he is shown as a charioteer was shown: with a moustache, which he wears in no other temple, and with no discus in his hand, for he had given his word to carry no weapon into that war — so he holds the conch, and a goad for the horses. The processional image's face is covered in dark, pitted marks. They are Bhishma's arrows, aimed at Arjuna and taken by the Lord upon himself, and the temple has never treated them as ornament: the kitchen here cooks without chilli and without oil, with ghee and black pepper instead, because a wounded face is held to feel heat. It is a small daily tenderness, and it states the theology plainly — the God who takes the wounds meant for the one he loves, and keeps them.

The sanctum is a household. Beside Venkatakrishnan stand Rukmini, his brother Balarama, his companion Satyaki, his son Pradyumna and his grandson Aniruddha — three generations at a single darshan. The temple is also a Pancha Murti sthalam, holding five forms of Vishnu in five shrines: Parthasarathy himself, Ranganatha reclining, Rama, Gajendra Varadaraja, and Yoga Narasimha, who has his own entrance and flagstaff, receives the first worship of every day, and whose bells are cast without clappers so that no sound disturbs his yoga. Vedavalli Thayar keeps her own shrine and, by an old vow, never steps across its threshold.

Triplicane is the English tongue's version of Thiruvallikeni — thiru-alli-keni, the sacred lily pond — and the pond is the temple's own. The Kairavini pushkarini lies beside the shrine, and this is held to be the one Divya Desam named after its tank rather than the other way about. A grove of tulasi once stood around it, called Vrindaranyam, where seven rishis are said to have kept their penance. Chennai grew up afterwards, around a shrine already old: the village was among the first the English East India Company rented from the Sultan of Golconda, in 1676, to enlarge the young settlement of Madras beyond its fort.

The building is Pallava. Tradition names Narasimhavarman I as its founder, and the stones carry Tamil inscriptions from the eighth century onward, from the reigns of Nandivarman II and of Dantivarman (c. 796–847), both devotees of Vishnu; Thirumangai Alvar, singing in that same century, credits the temple to Pallava kings. On that evidence it is reckoned the oldest structure standing in Chennai.

What the Pallavas began, others enlarged. Chola inscriptions of Rajaraja and Kulottunga III record their gifts; Vijayanagara rulers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries added subshrines and pillared halls, and the compound wall is mid-sixteenth-century work. Worship follows the Vaikhanasa Agama in the Thenkalai manner, and the temple is administered by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department of Tamil Nadu.

The temple stands behind a rajagopuram some five centuries old, its tiers packed with painted figures; a smaller tower beside it carries a gilded tableau of the chariot, Krishna at the reins. Within, the plan is Dravidian: a four-pillared Vijayanagara mandapa in front, a thirty-two-pillared hall of the mid-nineteenth century, the Tiruvaymoli Mandapa where the Prabandham is recited, and prakaras gathering the five shrines about the central one. Because those five stand together, one walk shows Vishnu in all three postures — standing as Venkatakrishnan, seated as Yoga Narasimha, reclining as Ranganatha upon Adisesha. On Theppam nights the deities go out upon the Kairavini on a lighted float.