Vadakkunnathan, Thrissur

What is worshipped here is not seen. Ghee has been poured over the linga at every abhishekam for centuries and never taken away: the sanctum now holds a smooth white mountain of it, far above a man's height, the linga somewhere inside. Devotees say it neither melts through the Kerala summer nor turns, and what the eye is given instead is the snow of Kailasa — the government's list of protected monuments still files the shrine under its older name, Ten-Kailasanatha, the Kailasa of the south.

Three sanctums face west under one long roof: Vadakkunnathan himself, with Parvati back to back behind him facing east; Shankaranarayana, Hari and Hara in one body; and Rama. Around the circumambulation stand Krishna, Rishabha, Simhodara, Sastha, the serpent deities and Adi Shankara.

The temple keeps no long annual utsavam. Its own night is Maha Shivaratri, when the doors stay open till morning, ghee and tender coconut are poured without pause, and lamps burn in their thousands. In Karkidakam, the monsoon month, the elephants come ungarlanded for Aanayoottu, fed rice, jaggery, coconut and ayurvedic preparations after the Ashtadravya Maha Ganapathi Havanam.

Thrissur Pooram is not this temple's festival but the maidan's, and Vadakkunnathan's part is to receive. On the Pooram star of Medam ten temples send their deities to Thekkinkadu to pay obeisance to him — Paramekkavu and Thiruvambadi at the head of the two sides — while he takes no part in the processions. The Ilanjithara Melam, the great massed percussion, is played inside his own courtyard beneath the ilanji tree; the umbrellas and the fireworks belong to the ground outside. Entry is for those who profess the Hindu faith, and men uncover the upper body and wear a mundu.

Thrissur is named for him. The town's older name, Thrissivaperur, means the town that carries the name of Lord Shiva, and the district administration says the city took its name from this temple. Vadakkunnathan stands on a low hillock at the exact centre of it — nine walled acres of lawn and stone inside the sixty-five-acre Thekkinkadu maidan, with the ring road of Swaraj Round drawn around them.

The temple's own account gives the first consecration to Parashurama, who is remembered as having raised this coast from the sea; tradition counts Vadakkunnathan the first of the hundred and eight Shivalayas he gave Kerala, the shrines an old Malayalam stotram still names one after another. Shiva is held to have shown himself here as a linga beneath a banyan, and the peepal of the Sreemoolasthanam marks where he and Parvati are said to have granted that boon. Adi Shankara's parents are remembered as having prayed here for a son, and four of his mutts stand in the town.

Sakthan Thampuran, Maharaja of Cochin, moved his capital to Thrissur late in the eighteenth century, cleared the teak wood that still gives Thekkinkadu its name, and in 1796 founded the Pooram. The Cochin Devaswom Board, formed at Thrissur in 1949, administers the temple today, and the Archaeological Survey of India protects the monument.

It is built of wood, stone and laterite and of nothing else. Four monumental gopurams face the four directions, each a stack of tiled roofs above carved timber gables, the compound low and long where a Tamil temple would have climbed. Within the wall the nalambalam gathers the shrines, and Vadakkunnathan's own sreekovil is round.

Left of the entrance stands the koothambalam, the temple theatre — a tall hall under a sloping roof of copper plates, with bracket figures and fine wood carving, built for Koodiyattam, Koothu and Nangyar Koothu. The murals are the other treasure: sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings of Mahabharata scenes, among them two worshipped daily, the reclining Vasukisayana and the twenty-armed Nrithanatha. A conservation of more than ten years under the Archaeological Survey of India, worked in lime, timber and old craft, won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award of Excellence in 2015.