If someone is looking for Inspiration, who is interested in Arts and Creativity, know the power of Engineering, understand the intelligence of our ancestors, this is the place one must visit.
Let me take you through a small journey of this temple, which i visited on 15th Aug, 2016.
The entrance :
Well to begin with you'll be welcomed by lots of monkeys, so be careful with your stuff.
This temple consists of 3 tiers of compound.
The first tier:
Below is a picture of Virupanna's eyes on the wall. The British government visited this place in 1902, collected the samples of blood and proved it's blood of a human being.
Here comes the interesting part of why this place is called Lepakshi. Let's go back to the period of Ramayana. When Ravaan kidnapped Sita, he flew over this place, where the bird Jatayu tried to rescue Sita. "Laya-Pakshi" was referred to the bird and that's how the place got it's name Lepakshi.
We all know what happened during the rescue, Ravaan cut the wings of the bird. Before that the highlighting part of the story, back in the treta yuga (i.e., 1,296,000 years ago) people were as tall as 30 Feet. Shortest among them was Sita, 25 feet. Coming back to the story, when the wings were cut off, Sita blessed the bird and created a foot impression, from where waters springs out, so that the bird can survive till Lord Rama reaches there. Here is the foot print below.
Even during the hot summers, the water still keeps coming and doesn't get dried up.
This place is a depiction of marriage of Lord Shiva and Parvathi in Kailash. Surrounded by different gods, positioned according to vastu, witnessing the marriage.
Well now the secret is revealed about the borders in the sarees. Who thought of the border designs?
500 years ago, they had carved all these designs on the pillars. Which is now the latest style in our sarees. There are 70 pillars, with unique designs on all the four sides, none of them repeated. Total of 280 designs. Below are few pics of the designs.
Below is the picture of structures built for pilgrims to rest during that period.
Back then when the mom told her kids to wait for sometime for food as she was cooking, the kids in the mean time carved this.
Since it was Lord shiva they built a Nandi, biggest in the world, 200m from this temple. Standing on the right side of this Nandi, one can see the hood of the snake.
Second tier:
Hanging Pillar-
Paintings made of natural pigments:
***Have no pics of the third tier as it's not allowed to take pics inside.***
The entire temple was built on one rock. The stones are just placed, no cement or anything.
With my Mom & Dad:
Amazing! Can't wait to see that place.
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