Karaikal Ammaiyar Temple

History

Her story is told in the Periya Puranam, the 12th-century account of the sixty-three Nayanmars by Sekkizhar. Punitavati, the devout wife of the merchant Paramadattan, gave one of two mangoes her husband had sent home to a hungry Shiva devotee; when he asked for the second, a mango appeared in answer to her prayer. Unsettled by her powers, he left and remarried, and she asked Shiva to take away her beauty, becoming a pey (ghostly devotee) and composing poems such as the Arputa Tiruvantati and the Tiruvirattai Manimalai.

Elaine Craddock’s study Śiva’s Demon Devotee (SUNY Press, 2010) describes the temple: Ammaiyar has her own shrine, where she appears as an ornamented married Tamil woman holding a mango and a scroll, beside a larger shrine of Shiva as Somanatha with the sixty-three Nayanmars around its walls. The most important form of Shiva here is Bhikshatana, the beggar who comes to her door. The temple book Craddock cites dates the present building to 1929, and in 1972 the artist Karai E. E. Alim painted her story on the walls around her shrine.

The mango festival is held at the full moon of the Tamil month of Ani (June–July) and lasts three days; around 1920 the French scholar Julien Vinson noted it had been celebrated with great pomp for about thirty years. The town re-enacts her story: Paramadattan’s wedding procession, Shiva as Bhikshatana passing down Raja Street while devotees hand out mangoes, the miracle of the second mango, and at night, with the street lights switched off, Punitavati’s procession in her pey form until Shiva grants her liberation.

Stories

The mango, the beggar and the devotee

Tradition says Punitavati, wife of the merchant Paramadattan, gave one of two mangoes sent by her husband to a hungry Shiva devotee. When her husband asked for the second, a mango is said to have appeared in answer to her prayer. Unsettled by the miracle, he left her. She is said to have asked Shiva to take away her beauty and became the ghoul-like devotee known as Karaikal Ammaiyar, one of the 63 Nayanmar saints and one of only three women among them.

A poet who reached Cambodia

Karaikal Ammaiyar is regarded as one of the earliest Tamil devotional poets, and her Arputa Tiruvantati is the first known work in the antati style, where each verse begins with the last word of the one before. She is thought to have lived around the 5th century CE, though dating is uncertain. Her image travelled far: a pediment of the 10th-century Banteay Srei temple near Angkor in Cambodia is described as showing Karaikal Ammaiyar.

Good to know

Shrine of one of the earliest Tamil Shaiva poet-saints

Three-day mango festival at the Ani full moon

Her story painted around her shrine in 1972

Getting there

Road access via Karaikal town; Puducherry Tourism places Karaikal about 135 km from Puducherry city. Nearest airport: Puducherry or Tiruchirappalli with onward road.