Temple Festivals
More than 250 temple festivals (utsava) are celebrated every year at the Varadarāja temple. These festivals differ in scale and elaboration, but most, if not all of them entail that the god – in his movable image – leaves his sanctum sanctorum and is taken in processions either in the temple precincts, or through town, or even over night to places near Kāñcipuram – the furthest place he visits is 30 kilometres away.
Among these small and larger festivals the feast considered most important is the so called “Brahmotsava” festival (called “Mahotsava” at the Kāmākṣī and the Ekāmbareśvara temples).
This major festival, celebrated once a year and lasting up to 10 days, is performed at all the three largest temples in town, and therefore is a good starting point for comparison. During these festivals the respective god or goddess leaves his or her temple; they are taken in processions along certain routes through town. Secular (or everyday-) space is thus transformed into ritual space.
The investigation of these festivals also includes the interaction of the gods and goddesses through their priests, and the construction and negotiation of the gods’ spheres of influence, their domain, through their processions. During these chief temple festivals held at each temple also certain incidents of legends pertaining to the temple histories are staged. During these enactments and by means of the processions of the gods through town, the ritual space is re-negotiated and eventually re-ordered, thus the hypothesis.
Most important are therefore the gods’ ways of approaching the urban and the rural environments and the interaction (or the lack of interaction) with the other ritual traditions.
Here, the structure of the city with its few and relatively autonomous religious centers (Viṣṇu-Kāñcī / Śiva-Kāñcī) has led to fairly close ritualized relations between the gods. Varadarāja's Ekāmbareśvara’s and and Kāmākṣī’s positions in this ritual topography will be researched from multiple perspectives. We look at the enactment, at the present day interpretations by participants and spectators, and at the textual representations of these incidents. Here the relevant texts are mainly the mediaeval ritual texts in Sanskrit (Pāñcarāṭrasaṃhitās) and so-called Māhātmyams, eulogies of the town or certain temples, containing the legendary accounts of the temples’ and the towns history mostly from specific sectarian perspectives.
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