Sthala Puranam: During Thretha Yuga, the Four Vedas were snatched away ffrom Lord Brahmma by ther demon Somasura. Lord Vishnu recovered them from the demon. As the Vedas remained with the demon for some time, their sanctity was lost as they had acquired an asura dosha. They prayed to Lord Shiva at this place to become pure and holy again. Lord Shiva purified the Vedas here and restored them to their original glory. The place where the four Vedas prayed was known as Vedasreni, which got changed in the later yugas and now called as Velachery.
The legend also has it that during Dwapara Yuga, when Yama came to snatch away the life of Markandeya, the Pasakkayiru fell on the Siva Lingam which Markandeya was hugging. Angered over this act, Lord Shiva snatched the Dandam of Yama. On the advice of Sage Narada, Yama created a temple pond here and woshipped the Lord Shiva and got back his Dandam. Hence the God here is known as Dandeeswarar and the Goddess as Karunambigai. The temple pond created by Yama is called Yama Theertham.
Importance: The rays of the sun fall on Shri Dandeeswarar on Makara Sankaranthi (Pongal). Many people celebrate their 60th / 80th birthday at this temple by offering their prayers and performing longevity homas. From the notice board displayed in the outer praharam, we could find that devotees have volunteered for Nithya Annadhanam expenses till the end of May 2013.
Shri Aadalarasan, Executive in a bank is a most respected personality in the Uzhavarappani circles. His group, Thirukkovil Uzhavarappani Mandram, Velachery, has around 1000 volunteers on their rolls. This group did an excellent sprucing up work of Shri Dandeeswarar Kovil at Velachery in connection with the forthcoming Shiv-Raathri festival on 10.03.2012, as part of their Uzhavarappani. We had the privilege of joining them to contribute our mite.
It was really amazing to see them, working with perfect coordination, erecting make-shift scaffolding and climbing atop the Temple's Rajagopuram to clean and paint it, unmindful of the hot sun.. By evening, they had completed their work and the newlook that they gave the Rajagopuram is seen to be believed.
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| Readying the scaffolding - These guys can scale any height without fear |
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| The painting work in progress |
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| The Finishing Touch |
In all, more than 100 volunteers from Thirukkovil Uzhavarappani Mandram participated in the temple cleaning work, which besides the Rajagopuram painting, also included cleaning the terrace of the temple. Our group numbering around 40 volunteers did the cleaning job inside the temple.
