Temples In India-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKAThe Vishnu temple at Thirumukudal nearKanchipuram was running a school, a hosteland a hospital (aaturasaalaa) with fifteenbeds. Provision was made in many templesfor the study of different subjects andexposition of sacred texts in theVyaakhyaanamantapa. The temple treasuryoften received endowments and arrangedfor their upkeep. The shore temple atMamallapuram has an inscription givingdetails of a contract among villagers aboutthe division of land and dues of land cess.The temple sometimes acted as theconfessional and helped its devotees toexpiate sins like that of accidentally killinga man during a hunting expedition. TheUlagalandaperumal temple at Kanchipuramtestifies to 48000 residents of the cityundertaking to supervise the managementof the temple according to custom andusage. At Srirangam, we have an inscriptionabout the citizens taking away themanagement of the temple from certaintemple servants who had been misusingtheir authority and entrusting it to others.These few examples serve to show whatimportant public services were beingrendered by the temple in the past. Otheragencies have taken over many of these.But it still remains a thing of beauty, ahallowed home of praise and prayer, asource of spiritual consolation, an incentiveto moral effort, and in the opinion of thedevout, a store house of Divine Powereasily accessible to all. .Obviously, the subject taken up in this issueis encyclopedic in range, and we havelimited ourselves to dealing with someprominent aspects only. They include withother things accounts of cults, rituals,festivals, art-treasures, styles ofTEMPLE INDIAarchitecture and some temples of all-Indiaimportance. They are sure to whet theappetite for more information, and someof them will show what we are missing byroutine or mechanical visits to temples orpilgrimages of a similar kind. These maymake for spiritual edification, but the spiritwill be even more thoroughly satisfied bythe many ways in which the temple helpsfulfillment.We thank all our contributors for kindlyresponding to our requests in spite of theheavy demands of their time and also. Thepublishers and authors for giving uspermission to reproduce copyright material.Imperfections and inadequacies areregretted, but they seem inevitable in anundertaking of this kind.5