Swaminatha Swamy, Swamimalai

The name carries the whole story. Asked by the child Murugan to explain the meaning of the Pranava — the syllable Om — Brahma could not, and was imprisoned for it; when Shiva came to intercede and put the same question to his son, Murugan expounded the mantra to his father. Shiva took the place of the student, and Murugan became Swaminatha, the lord of the Lord. The hill sets that reversal in stone: Murugan holds the guru's seat at the summit, while Shiva as Sundareswarar and Parvati as Meenakshi keep their shrines at the foot.

Swamimalai is counted the fourth of the Arupadai Veedu, the six battle-camps of Murugan strung across Tamil Nadu, and among them it is the seat of teaching — the shrine pilgrims seek for learning, initiation and clarity of mind. The great day is Vaikasi Visakam in May or June, the star of Murugan's birth; Thai Poosam, Panguni Uthiram, the fast of Skanda Sashti and the ten-day Tirukarthikai in November fill out the year.

Sixty steps climb from the lower precinct to the sanctum, each named for one of the sixty years of the Tamil cycle, so that the ascent is a walk through a whole reckoning of time. Five sacred waters belong to the temple — the Vajra, Saravana and Brahma theerthams, the Netra Pushkarini and the Kaveri itself at Kumaratturai — and the shrine sits within the crowded sacred landscape of Kumbakonam, with the Adi Kumbeswarar and Sarangapani temples, the Mahamaham tank and the Chola masterpiece at Darasuram all close at hand.

Swamimalai stands a few kilometres west of Kumbakonam, in the old delta country where the Kaveri divides and divides again and temple towns follow one another along every branch of the river. The shrine of Swaminathaswamy crowns a low hill above the village — an artificial mound, a kattu malai in Tamil, raised some sixty feet over the fields and the water.

The place is very old. Sangam poetry knows it as Thiruveragam, one of the six camps of Murugan named in Nakkeerar's Tirumurugatruppadai, and the fourteenth-century poet Arunagirinathar sang of it in his Tiruppugazh. Its stone was rebuilt and enlarged many times under Chola and later patronage; temple accounts recall damage in the wars that swept the Carnatic in the eighteenth century, and the most recent consecration, the kumbhabhishekam, was performed in September 2015.

The village around it is famous in its own right. Swamimalai is the home of the sthapathis who still cast images in panchaloha by the lost-wax method, in an unbroken line from the Chola workshops — a craft granted a geographical-indication tag of its own in 2008–09. Many pilgrims come for darshan and leave with a small bronze.

Three gateways lead in, the southern one a five-storey gopuram, and the plan rises in three precincts: the first at the base of the hill, the second halfway up, the third circling the sanctum at the top. The granite image of Swaminathaswamy stands about six feet tall and holds a danda, the staff of a teacher, in its right hand.

The mount here is not the peacock but an elephant, said to have been Indra's gift, and it is set in front of the deity rather than in line behind — an iconography kept at only one other Murugan shrine, Tiruttani. At the foot of the hill lie the Sundareswarar and Meenakshi shrines, the mandapas and the tanks; the temple is administered by the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.