Thiruparankundram Murugan

Of the six abodes, this is the wedding place. When Murugan had destroyed Surapadman at Tiruchendur — the Surasamharam — Indra gave him his daughter Deivanai, also called Devasena, and the marriage was solemnised at Thiruparankundram; here too, tradition says, Murugan worshipped his own father as Parangirinathar. Every Panguni the wedding is performed again over a fortnight of festival, and unmarried women and newly married couples come in their thousands to see it.

What astonishes visitors is the sanctum itself. Cell after cell is cut into the same wall of rock, so that Murugan, Durga, Vinayaka, Shiva and Vishnu are all worshipped in a single unbroken face of the hill — and in a rare arrangement, Shiva and Vishnu stand facing one another. The image of Murugan in the inner sanctum is carved from one stone, and panels of Shiva's dance of bliss are cut outside it.

The great occasion is Skanda Shashti in the Tamil month of Aippasi, when the slaying of Surapadman is enacted on the sixth day and the festive image is carried around the temple streets on different mounts. Karthigai Deepam is marked by a lamp lit on the summit, Vaikasi Visakam recalls Murugan's birth, and in Chittirai the temple's Murugan and Perumal travel to Madurai for Meenakshi's wedding — a courtesy between two shrines that has been kept for centuries.

Thiruparankundram stands about eight kilometres south-west of Madurai, at the northern foot of a vast granite dome that the devout call Skandamalai, the hill of Skanda. The Sangam-era poem Tirumurugatruppadai, attributed to Nakkirar and by tradition composed here, sings of six war-camps of Murugan — the Arupadai Veedu — and the first it names is this one; ever since, Thiruparankundram has been counted at the head of the six.

The heart of the temple is a rock-cut shrine. Its cave sanctums are reckoned an eighth-century work of the early Pandyas, hollowed straight into the hillside, and tradition credits the restoration of worship here to Gajapathy, minister to a later Pandya king. The hill itself carries far older marks: natural caverns with Jain stone beds and Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions going back to about the first century BCE.

Sambandar sang of the Shiva of this hill in the seventh-century Tevaram, which places the temple among the 276 Paadal Petra Sthalams, and Arunagirinathar praised it later in the Tiruppugazh. The long pillared halls and the towering gateway that visitors meet first were the gift of the Madurai Nayakas in the sixteenth century. The temple is administered today by the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.

The living rock governs everything. A flight of six steps, the Shadashara Padigal, lifts the pilgrim towards three halls set at rising levels — the Kambathadi, Ardha and Maha mandapams — and the reliefs along the way, Mahishasuramardini, Karpaga Vinayagar, Andarabaranar and Uggirar, are all cut from the hill rather than built against it.

Outside, the Aasthana Mandapam of carved pillars leads to a seven-tiered rajagopuram some forty-six metres high, its life-size Nayaka sculpture from the sixteenth century. Before the flagstaff stand Nandi, peacock and mouse together; a tank where pilgrims feed the fish lies beyond the wall, one of five sacred waters here, and the Kasi Viswanathar shrine crowns the hill three hundred and twenty metres above.