Place · Murugan shrine · India
Pālani
The hilltop Murugan temple at Palani in Dindigul district, Tamil Nadu, one of the six Arupadaiveedu abodes of Murugan (Kartikeya). The deity Dandayudhapani is worshipped as the renunciate boy-Murugan who left Mount Kailash in anger after being tricked out of the mango of knowledge by his brother Ganesha. The temple sits on a 165-metre hillock reached by 659 steps, a rope ride or a cable car. The deity's medicinal paste (panchamirtham), made daily from bananas, jaggery, honey, raisins and dates, is a GI-tagged prasadam. Palani is also a working centre of the Siddha medical tradition, with the deity worshipped as a Siddha.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Tamil Murugan tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 10.450, 77.521
Connections (5)
- Sacred transplantHimalayas
Scholars note that Pālani's hill is claimed as Himalayan stone, not merely as its likeness. Tamil tradition has the asura Idumban carry two peaks south from the Himalayas on a shoulder-pole at the sage Agastya's bidding and set them down here. Pilgrims still climb with the kāvadi in imitation, a portable Himalaya walked into Tamil country.
- Devotional corpus onArunagirinātha
Arunagirinātha sang Tiruppugazh at Pālani, and the hill is among the places he names most often. His songs are built on chandam, metrical patterns counted out in beats before any word is fitted to them, so a Tiruppugazh verse can be recited as rhythm alone. Pilgrims climbing the steps still sing them.
- Medical tradition atSiddha medicine
Pālani's image is held to be navapāshāna, nine poisonous minerals compounded into a single medicinal stone by the Siddhar Bhōgar — exactly the claim Siddha medicine makes for itself, that metals and poisons can be detoxified into remedies. The panchāmirtam poured over it is taken home as medicine, which is why the temple runs a dispensary.
- Companion in the same setSwamimalai
Pālani and Swāmimalai are the two camps that turn on the same quarrel. At Pālani Murugan is the son who renounced everything over the fruit of knowledge that went to his brother; at Swāmimalai he is the son who withheld the meaning of the praṇava from his father. The pair holds the tradition's two readings of him.
- Shared site withKataragama
Kataragama in south-eastern Sri Lanka is Murugan to Tamil Hindus, Kataragama deviyo to Sinhala Buddhists and a shrine of the Vedda people before either. Its kāvadi and fire-walking come straight from the Tamil Murugan cult, and Arunagirinātha sang there, so Pālani and Kataragama belong to one devotional geography across the Palk Strait.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Palani”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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