Meenakshi Amman Templeਮੀਨਾਕਸ਼ੀ ਅੰਮਨ ਮੰਦਰ (ਮਦੁਰੈ)

Meenakshi Amman Temple, on the southern bank of the Vaigai river in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, is one of the most recognisable Hindu temples in India. The temple is dedicated to Meenakshi, a form of the goddess Parvati and its principal deity, and to her consort Sundareswarar, a form of Shiva. Its fourteen painted gopurams, covered with thousands of stucco sculptures, give Madurai its famous skyline, and the temple draws tens of thousands of worshippers every day.

What is Meenakshi Temple?

Meenakshi Temple is a historic Hindu temple complex in the heart of Madurai, and among the great mandirs of India it is one of the most visited. Tamil devotional hymns have praised it for more than a thousand years: it is counted among the Paadal Petra Sthalams, shrines sung of by the Shaiva saint-poets, the Nayanars, between the 6th and 11th centuries. The name Meenakshi means "fish-eyed" in Tamil, from mina (fish) and akshi (eyes), and tradition calls the goddess the royal queen of the Pandya kingdom. The temple also has the rare distinction of placing the goddess before her consort: her shrine is the primary one, and the temple carries her name.

Who are Meenakshi and Sundareswarar?

Meenakshi is worshipped here as a form of Parvati, and Sundareswarar as a form of Shiva. Their divine wedding, the Meenakshi Thirukalyanam, is the high point of the temple's ritual year and is celebrated as a full public festival, with Vishnu present in the story as Alagar, the goddess's brother, who gives her away in marriage. This wedding narrative is why the temple sits at the centre of Madurai's religious and civic life: the city and the temple grew around each other.

How old is the temple?

Tamil literature implies a shrine at Madurai by the 6th century CE, and the earliest surviving masonry belongs to the Pandyas: Sadayavarman Kulasekara Pandya I, who reigned from 1190 to 1216, built the gopuram at the Sundareswarar shrine entrance and the central part of the Meenakshi shrine, and his successors added towers and corridors in the 13th century. In 1311 the armies of the Delhi Sultanate under Malik Kafur raided Madurai and plundered the temple. After the Vijayanagara empire recaptured Madurai in 1378, Kumara Kampana rebuilt the temple and reconsecrated its idols. Most of what visitors see today, however, dates to the Madurai Nayaks of the 16th and 17th centuries: Vishwanatha Nayak, who reigned from 1529 to 1564, fortified the complex and gilded the Meenakshi vimana, and Tirumala Nayaka, who reigned from 1623 to 1655, added the vasantha mandapa. The southern gopuram, the tallest, was built in the late 16th century.

What do the 14 gopurams look like?

The temple is built in the Dravidian style of South India, the subject of Jugti's explainer on Dravida temple architecture. It has fourteen gopurams: four outer towers of nine storeys, one of seven, five of five, two of three, plus two gold-gilded sanctum towers. The tallest is the southern tower at 170 feet, carrying more than 1,500 sculptural panels that narrate legends from the Puranas. Inside, the thousand-pillared hall, now an art museum, holds about 985 carved pillars despite its name. The Golden Lotus Tank, Potramarai Kulam, sits within the complex and is used for ritual bathing, and the whole complex covers about 14 acres with tens of thousands of sculptures.

When is the Meenakshi Thirukalyanam festival?

The wedding of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar is celebrated over fifteen days in the Tamil month of Chithirai, which falls in April and May, as part of the Chithirai Thiruvizha. The festival includes the temple car procession, the Ther Thiruvizha, and the float festival, the Theppa Thiruvizha, and it draws the largest crowds of the year. The temple holds some festival in nearly every month of the Tamil calendar, including Avani Moolam, Navaratri and Maha Shivaratri.

What should a first-time visitor know?

The temple receives tens of thousands of visitors daily: an academic art-history guide estimates around 20,000 a day. It is administered by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu, and its official portal is the HR&CE-run site for the temple. The west gopuram is so identified with the city that the Tamil Nadu state emblem is based on it. Together with its fellow Tamil Nadu shrines, it forms part of the Dravidian temple heritage of the state.