Varadaraja Perumal, Kanchipuram

Among the hundred and eight Divya Desams — the abodes of Vishnu hymned by the Alvars — this one is Thirukkachi, Attigiri, and no city in India holds more of them than Kanchipuram. Three Alvars sang it: Thirumangai in four verses, Bhoothathalvar in two, Peyalvar in one; and Thirumangai names the god by his tree, Attiyuran. Sri Vaishnavas give three shrines one word apiece: Srirangam is Koil, the Temple; Tirumala is Malai, the Hill; and this is Perumal Koil.

Ramanuja belonged here before he belonged to Srirangam. Parted from his teacher, he became a devotee of Varadaraja and found here Kanchipurna — Thirukkachi Nambi — who came daily with flowers to fan the deity and was held to converse with him as he fanned. Six of Ramanuja's questions are said to have been answered by Varadaraja through Nambi; and when he asked to be taken as Kanchipurna's disciple he was refused and sent instead, on the Lord's own instruction, to Srirangam. It was Kanchi's Perarulalan who gave him the name he keeps still: Ethirajar, king of the ascetics.

The deity first worshipped here was not granite but atti wood. Hidden from invaders in the sixteenth century and replaced by the stone Devaraja Perumal, it was found again in 1709 when the tank was drained. From that came the rarest observance in the south: Athi Varadar rests in a chamber beneath the water of the Anantha Saras and is raised once in forty years — most recently within living memory, when pilgrims came in their millions — to be worshipped forty-eight days in the Vasantha Mandapam, twenty-four reclining and twenty-four standing, before returning to the water. In other years the great days are the Vaikasi Brahmotsavam, whose Garuda Sevai on the third morning doubles every crowd and whose chariot rolls on the seventh, and Vaikunta Ekadasi in Margazhi, when the Sorgavasal opens.

In Vishnu Kanchi, the eastern half of Kanchipuram, the ground lifts into a low rock called Hastagiri, the elephant hill, where Vishnu stands as Varadaraja, the king who gives — known equally as Perarulalan, the great bestower of grace. Indra, released from a curse, is said to have taken elephant form and borne the god here; and Brahma, performing an ashvamedha on the bank of the Vegavati, saw Vishnu come out of that fire within an atti, a fig tree — whence the temple's older names, Attiyur and Attigiri.

The stone keeps its own archive: some three hundred and fifty inscriptions in Chola, Pandya, Hoysala and Vijayanagara hands. The Cholas renovated the temple in 1053 and it grew under Kulottunga I and Vikrama Chola; the Vijayanagara kings raised the eastern tower, and the temple car is held to be Krishnadevaraya's gift of 1517.

With invasion expected in 1688 the images were carried off to Udayarpalayam and came home in 1710; the return is kept as a festival still. Robert Clive came to see the Garuda Sevai and left a necklace, worn each year on its day and called the Clive Maharkandi. Tamil Nadu's Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department administers it, with the Thathachariars as hereditary trustees.

At 23.5 acres (9.5 hectares) this is the largest temple in Kanchipuram — thirty-two shrines, nineteen vimanas and three hundred and eighty-nine pillared halls. The sanctum stands not at ground level but up on the Hastagiri rock, reached by a flight of steps, where Varadaraja is three metres of granite facing west; Perundevi Thayar keeps her shrine below, and custom sends the pilgrim to her first.

Its most famous stone is the hundred-pillared hall, Vijayanagara work, its pillars cut with yalis, war-horses and mounted riders; at its corners hang chains of stone, each carved from a single block, link freed from link without a join. Over the steps to the sanctum are two lizards, one gold-plated and one silver, which pilgrims reach up to touch.