The seven Shiva temples of Mylapore

A view of Virupakshiswarar temple at Mylpore in Chennai | Photo Credit: Sriram V.

Of late, cult of the Sapta Sthana circuit is growing in Mylapore. It involves seven Shiva temples in the area. If social media is to be believed, the tradition is a 1000 years old! And yet until the early 2000s, none of us Mylaporeans had even heard of it, familiar as we were with the temples.

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Before we get on with Sapta Sthanam in Mylapore, we need to know that such a tradition exists elsewhere and for centuries. In the Thanjavur region is a group of seven Shiva temples, all of them of great antiquity, adored in the Tevaram. These are Thiruvaiyyaru, Thirpazhanam, Thiruchotruthurai, Thiruneithanam, Thiruvedikudi, Thirupoonthuruthi and Thirkandiyur. In the month of April/May (Chithirai), the Lord at Thiruvaiyyaru sets out in a palanquin and visits each of the other six temples. At each, the deity of that temple joins in a palanquin and this way, there are seven palanquins by the end of the festival. The temples are all by the Cauvery, on whose dry bed the procession progresses.

In sharp contrast, the seven temples of Mylapore are not linked by a common legend, and they are also not shrines of the same antiquity. Among these, the Kapaliswarar temple is certainly the oldest. Though its inscriptional records are weak, its history is well established by way of Tamil poetic works – the Tevaram (7th century CE), the Periya Puranam (12th) and the Tirupugazh (15th). The lack of inscriptions is attributed to the destruction of the older shrine by the sea. This is most likely to have been by the Portuguese – though we don’t have any written evidence of this, their record at Shiva temples in Sri Lanka supports the theory. The present temple is said to be “around three hundred years old,” and as we have been saying this for around a hundred years, let us add a century to it. The relocated precinct today owes a lot to the dubashes of the East India Company.