Meenakshi Temple

Meenakshi Temple, Madurai

Lots of fun visiting with Becky's host family, visiting her program and meeting the director of the program (who loves Becky), shopping in the bazaar, and taking a private tour of the Meenakshi Temple with Becky's professor - professor of Hindu art and anthropology - Dr. V. (it's a longer name, but everyone seems to call him Dr. V.).

The temple is among the great temples in Hinduism and is the heart of Madurai. It was first constructed in the 7th century, CE, so it is about 1300 years old.

The temple is huge and is divided into two temples - one devoted to Shiva (in the incarnation of Sunderaswarar) and one devoted to Meenakshi (Meenakshi is an incarnation of Parvati - remember, in Hinduism, every god is an incarnation of another god).


Meenakshi is replete with gazillions of statues

Dr. V is an anthropologist. We discussed the plethora of avatars of gods in Hinduism. Dr. V's take is that many years ago, you had in the vast subcontinent many different religions evolving among the different tribes - different, but related and similar. As societies developed, conquered one another, there was an attempt to "unify" all these disparate faiths under one Hindu religion. The best political way to deal with these disparate gods among these different tribes was to say that they were just different incarnations of the same gods. Thus, one tribe's Meenakshi became simply an incarnation of another tribe's Parvati, as one tribe's Durga was an incarnation of another tribe's Karni Mata, and so on.

The temple commemorates the marriage of Shiva and Meenakshi (Parvati). Every night, there is a wedding procession through the streets of Madurai, beginning and ending in the temple. Shiva rides a bull - Nandi, the bull god, is Shiva's guardian. Nandi represents sexual energy and fertility, which Shiva controls when he rides Nandi.


Shiva, riding Nandi the bull

An elephant marches in the wedding procession. They were preparing the procession when we were there - I gave the elephant a couple of rupees and the elephant blessed me (I held out a 2 rupee coin, the elephant took the coin with its trunk, and then it lifted the trunk and gently placed it upon my head).


Ganesh

The temple was really hopping when we were there. There were a bunch of pilgrims there. This group, according to Dr. V, travels around to temples once a year on a pilgrimage. They take 3 weeks off in December and spend the time making pilgrimages to temples. All men, in ages from around 20 to 70 it seemed, all bare-chested. All totally into the scene.


Pool of holy water inside Meenakshi Temple

Fascinated by Hinduism. Hinduism seems unlike organized religions I'm familiar with - more like an unorganized religion. As I mentioned above, Dr. V sees Hinduism having developed as amalgamation of multiple tribal faiths and traditions. Unlike some religions, it never developed a monolothic structure and dogma, so differences are tolerated.

Dr. V is fascinated with Judaism which he views, like Buddhism, as an "ethical religion." Ethical human behavior toward other humans is, in his view, central to Judaism, more so than Hinduism, for example.

As we walked through Meenakshi Temple, we discussed some similarities and contrasts between Judaism and Hinduism. He was most interested in the effect of the Roman occupation and destruction of the Temple - how it contributed to a new and evolved model of Rabbinic and congregational Judaism.