Place · river source tirtha · India
Talakāverī
Also known as Talakaveri, Talakāverī
The source of the Kaveri at 1,276m in the Brahmagiri hills of Kodagu (Coorg), where the river emerges from a small tank beside the Agastyeshwara temple. The place is sacred as the tapasya of the sage Agastya, who is said to have carried the Kaveri south in his water-pot. The Tulasankramana festival on 17 October each year marks the river's annual rise from the spring, when a column of water surges up at a precise moment and is caught in copper vessels by pilgrims. The site is managed jointly by the Karnataka state and the Kodagu royal family's trust.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Kaveri source tradition
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — The physical place or feature is identifiable; its sacred origin or association belongs to a textual or living tradition.
- Location
- 12.387, 75.493
Connections (3)
- River flowSrirangapatna / Srirangapattana
From the tank at Talakaveri in the Kodagu hills the river runs down onto the Mysore plateau and reaches its first island shrine at Srirangapatna, where Ranganatha reclines on Shesha. The Kaveri's sanctity is serial rather than concentrated: Srirangapatna, then Shivanasamudra, then Srirangam far downstream, each an island in the river, so the whole course reads as a single temple laid out lengthwise.
- Its source is a tirthaKāverī
Talakaveri is the source tank on the Brahmagiri ridge in Kodagu where the Kaveri is held to rise, and at Tula Sankramana in October a spring in the tank fills at a predicted moment before a large crowd. Kodava households treat the river as an ancestress rather than a passing sacred object, so the whole of the Tamil and Kannada delta civilisation downstream depends on rain falling on a few hundred square kilometres of Ghat forest.
- Site adjacencyKodagu (Coorg)
Talakaveri is inside Kodagu, whose Kodava clans held land and arms by custom and whose forests are the Kaveri's catchment. The tank fills on a calculated day each October and the gathering for it is the region's largest festival. A river that irrigates the Tamil delta three hundred kilometres away begins in a hill district with its own language and its own martial history.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Talakaveri”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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