‘Hampi’ in Karnataka is in the banks of river ‘Hamba’. The letter ‘ha’ is often interchanged with ‘pa’ in Kannada language and so this is actually the river is ‘Pamba’. This was
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Columns by Devotees
Sembakkam near Vellore
Sembakkam is a beautiful village near Vellore in Tamil Nadu. The uniqueness of this village is that it has a Ganesha temple in which eleven moorthis (deities) of Ganesha have appeared on its own
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Kamalalayam
In the Thiruvarur temple, the size of the temple is about 5 ‘veli’s (’veli’ is a tamil word indicating an unit of measurement of area in olden days). The temple tank ‘Kamalalayam’ is a
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Thiruvarur Thiyagaraja
Thiyagaraja temple is one of the biggest temples in the town of Thiruvarur in South India. The chief deity Shiva assumes the name Thiyagaraja. ‘Raja’ denotes a king. The lion is called ‘mruga
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Dharmasamvardhini
The town of Thiruvayyaru in Tamil Nadu has no Vishnu Temple. This is because, the presiding deity of this town, Dharmasamvardhini, sports the conch (’sankha’) and wheel (’chakra’) which are
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Thiruvottriyur Temple
Thiruvottriyur is a place in Chennai in South India. The presiding deities of the main Shiva temple here are Thyagaraja and Vadivudaiyamman. The speciality of this temple is that it houses 27
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The Wise Sparrow
Balance is the secret of success. Mahabharata deals with this golden precept very well. We discussed earlier how even an enemy could be relied on when we need a bail out. No one is an eternal enemy
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The Tiger and the Jackal
Appearance can be deceptive. Mahabharata talks in detail about this valuable adage. In this week’s edition, we discuss this through a Mahabharata story. Read on.. In ancient times, in a city
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Abedhananda
Swami Abhedananda was a great saint who used to love and chant mahamantra all the time. When we (Sri Swamiji) start the lecture, we generally chant ‘hare rama… ‘ and allow the listeners to
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Spirituality in a house
It is astonishing to see how our elders have used the intricacies of the scriptures even in mundane worldly matters such as architecture of a house. The houses in South India are built in a linear
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Temple architecture and human body
The structure of a temple represents the structure of our body. The ‘sapta prAkAras’ (seven corridors around the Sanctum Sanctorum) represent the six ‘chakras’ and the ‘sahasrara’ (in the
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Dance, a divine art
In our culture, classical dance is a form of divine art. Each state in India has a unique style of traditional dance and a unique name for it. Bharata Natyam is Tamil Nadu’s classical dance. In
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