Shivaratri occurs once a month, the night before the new moon night; it is only the Shivaratri that occurs before the onset of the last month of the Hindu year, that is celebrated as MahaShivaratri or the Great Shivaratri.
This festival is celebrated in households and temples all over India. It is a very special occasion in Tamilnadu, particularly in the ancient Shiva temples distributed all over the land.
What makes it significant is the connection to ancient temple history and Tamil music (and literary) history.
While it is known to many that there are hundreds of millennia-old Shiva temples in Tamilnadu, what is not widely known is the fact that 275 of them (mostly in Tamilnadu) are connected by a unique thread.
These 275 temples are referred to as the ‘TevaraPaadal Petra Stalangal’; translated in English, what it means is that these 275 temples were glorified by the tamilTevara hymns sung in the 7th through 9th centuries by a triad of saints Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar. These Saints walked the length and breadth of the Tamil speaking region visiting Shiva temples and singing their glory in chaste Tamil.
These hymns are still sung in temples particularly by the Oduvar community today as part of religious services.
But for the efforts undertaken by the Chola monarch Raja RajaCholan who set out to protect this musical heritage we might not have been privileged to receive this legacy . It was under his patronage that the musical saint NambiandarNambi gave a musical form to these hymns based on the then prevailing oral tradition. Raja RajaCholan set up endowments in order to support communities of traditional musicians to have a permanent place in the singing of these musical hymns in religious services.
It takes our breath away when we realize that what we hear in temples is a tradition that has been around for a 1000 years (We just celebrated a thousand years of the Rajarajesvaram temple). It is thus a rich – living- musical tradition that has no parallel elsewhere in the world.
The 275 Shiva temples praised by this musical legacy are all over India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, although most of them are in Tamilnadu. Some of these such as Chidambaram, Rameswaram, Kalahasti and Tiruvannamalai are well known. We Chennai-ites also share this glory as our city has a long history going back to three of these shrines Tirumayilai, Tiruvanmyur and Tiruvotriyur.
Let us cherish this musical and cultural heritage on the occasion of MahaShivaratri 2012.
PS: The link below leads you to a pictorial presentation of the 275 TevaraPaadalpetralstalangal, accompanied in the background by a musical composition of yours truly, sung by ViditaKanniks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSupcUTmEI
About the author
Kanniks Kannikeswaran
www.kanniks.com