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Jaffna’s iconic temple: Nallur Kandaswamy

20 Nov 2021

By Thulasi Muttulingam Adoration of Lord Murugan is deeply enmeshed in the Sri Lankan psyche, among the indigenous Veddas, Sinhalese, and Tamils alike. The ever-youthful divine princeling is a much-loved deity on these shores; particularly as he’s supposed to have wed a Sri Lankan indigenous girl, Valli, a Vedda chieftain’s daughter. In Sinhala Buddhism, he’s a much-loved guardian deity of the island nation. In Tamil Hinduism, he’s an accessible Adonis who settled down with a local girl. The local girl being an indigenous Vedda, the Vedda community also worship him and run one of the most important shrines for him in the country in the hilly, forested terrain of Kataragama, Sri Lanka. Alongside Kataragama, which draws pilgrims on pada yatra (foot pilgrimage) from around the country, are many other shrines devoted to the resplendent princeling dotting the island. The Tamil enclave of Jaffna comes in for its fair share of well-known Murugan shrines too. Of these, one of the most well-known identity markers of Jaffna, widely used by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau as an emblem of the region, is the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple. It shows up well in promotional photos with its unique façade and is thus a well-known feature in Jaffna’s postcards. People from around the world who are familiar with the area or visited it even once, recognise the famed iconic temple instantly. It’s a beacon to millions with its Tamil-lettered, flashing “Om Muruga” Gopuram at its main entrance beckoning the faithful and the culturally curious alike, from both local and international shores. In the heart of Jaffna city, surrounded by pristine white sands and an ever elaborately evolving temple structure, adored by millions, Lord Murugan reigns supreme. Jaffna is often associated with Sri Lanka’s long-drawn-out civil war. Even now, a decade past the end of that 30-year war, that’s what the area is best known for outside its own environs. Perhaps fitting then that its most iconic deity is the Hindu God of War. Locally, however, he’s known more as a lover than a warrior. So much so that he became immortalised by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in one of their promotional songs for seemingly all the wrong reasons – as per the LTTE anyway. They critiqued him for cavorting with Valli instead of lending his support to their cause. This might have been an oblique reference to the temple management keeping well clear of politics and the ethnicised conflict. Nevertheless, Lord Murugan isn’t held by his adoring Tamil public to have taken part in the war. His adoring Sinhala public don’t think he took partisan sides in it either. Vishnu, by the by, is held to have done so (on the side of the Sinhalese), but that’s another story. Skanda/Murugan, in the meantime, is worshipped all over Sri Lanka as a cherubic mischievous child, a handsome stylish prince, a romantic prankster lover, but not as a God of war. Every November, for the Skanda Sashti Festival, which celebrates the main events in the life of this God, the Sooran Por (his famous war against the Asura king Soorapadman) is enacted – but the people are much more invested in his subsequent romance with Valli on Sri Lankan shores and the placation of first wife Deivayanai after he comes home with his second wife. Bigamy, for an ordinary man, would be frowned upon, but Murugan, returning to his palace with his local conquest to find the doors locked to him by the first wife, gains a lot of sympathy – every year there is much investment in his long-drawn-out romance and ultimate conjugal bliss with both wives after sending emissaries, including – finally – Lord Vishnu, to placate his first wife. And that’s how he’s widely worshipped around the nation here. The handsome God astride a peacock, with a light-skinned wife, the Goddess Deivayani, on his right and the dark-skinned tribal wife, the Goddess Valli, on his left. In Nallur though, he’s worshipped as a vel (his spear). This carries with it its own history and an ongoing feud on agama versus non-agama worship forms culturally cleaving as well as entrenching the temple’s foremost place in Jaffna Tamils’ consciousness. History of the temple The Nallur Kandaswamy Temple is believed by Jaffna’s Tamils to be one of their most historic temples. They trace it back 1,000 years or more via popular imagination. The current edifice, however, is only 286 years old. It was built to commemorate the historical memory of the ancient temple that people remembered via popular folklore as once standing in the vicinity. At the time the current temple was built, Jaffna was under Dutch rule and had had all its temples razed to the ground more than a century prior by the invading Portuguese in 1620. All pre-colonial religious structures had long been demolished by that time and first Catholicism under the Portuguese and then Calvinism under the Dutch had been forced upon the people. Popular folkloric memory is still rampant with tales of how people secretly worshipped their Hindu gods. Symbolism took the place of statues and so trident and vel worship became common among the masses – explained away as gardening tools, stuck under trees to the colonisers. Towards the end of the Dutch period, however, the governors became a little more lenient in allowing locals to worship their own gods. The Dutch Governor’s wife had favoured one of the neighbourhood children, and brought him up as a protégé at her residence in the Dutch Fort. When he grew up and wished to build a Shiva temple, he was granted permission – although being the first temple to come up again in over a century, he had to employ subterfuge to open it up for public worship. As per his descendants citing family lore, permission had been granted to their ancestor to maintain the temple only for his own worship within his residence. Even this was a massive first in the region. Thereafter, he incrementally sought permission for friends and family to visit the temple and then eventually went on to make it public. This was Vaithilinga Chettiar, whose descendants still run the Vannarpannai Sivan Kovil, now an archaeological protected monument of Sri Lanka. Once that temple began to go public, a shroff (accountant) in the Dutch administrative service, Don Juan Ragunatha Maapana Mudaliyar sought permission to rebuild the historic Nallur Kandaswamy Temple as well. The ideation and veneration for that temple was still strong in folk memory, but its exact precolonial location had by then been forgotten. Based on approximations of folk memory, the Mudaliyar had selected a region in the general area of the old Nallur Kingdom – which had been a Muslim settlement till just a few years prior – and placed a vel with a small edifice there. The original structure was quite humble, made of stone and a cadjan roof. The building of these two temples marked the beginning of Hindu revivalism in the region which had been at least nominally Christian under threat of the sword for over a century. Current scholarship estimates the original Nallur temple’s location to be where an Anglican St. James Church is currently standing about 100 metres away. It was originally a Catholic church under the Portuguese, then a Calvinist church under the Dutch, and eventually became an Anglican church under the British, which still stands. Roadwork in the 1970s led to the discovery of underlying structures in this area, leading scholars to estimate it to be the likely site of the original Nallur Kandaswamy Temple. As of now, three major religions are united in the quest for the historical Nallur – and settle their differences amicably and even respectfully. The church held to be the site of the original temple, and the current temple is situated amidst an old Muslim settlement, adjoining a Sufi tomb worshipped until recently by Muslims. Nevertheless, due to the decades-long war, there is wariness in discussing what is well known historic as well as current memory in case it boils over into religious or ethnic conflict. The current temple, now possibly in its fifth avatar, is built upon a historical memory of a kingly seat that was sacked several times and then rebuilt in both precolonial and colonial history. The earliest known reference to the temple within Sri Lanka was from Sinhalese sources, the Rajavaliya and Kokila Sandesa dating to the 15th and 17th Centuries, respectively. They refer to Sapumal Kumaraya, who later ruled the country from the Kotte Kingdom as King Buvanekabahu VI, and the builder of the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple. He is recorded as having warred against the then independent Jaffna Kingdom from 1447-1450, eventually winning the war leading to the Jaffna king escaping to South India with his family. As such, he is said to have sacked their capital city Nallur, then rebuilt it along with the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple – the Sinhalese sources, however, are not clear on whether he was responsible for rebuilding an existing temple that he had sacked or built a new one. He ruled Jaffna for 17 years before relocating to Kotte to claim his kingdom there – at which point, Jaffna’s exiled royal family returned again to claim their kingdom. When the Portuguese, a few centuries later, destroyed the area’s temples, and used the dismantled stones to build their fort on the coast, which still stands. Archaeological research around this fort in 1971 yielded a stone with an inscription from Rajendra Chola dated to 1030 AD recording his contributions to a temple in the area of Nallur, Jaffna – but it does not specify whether it was the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple. Scholars estimate it likely could have been, as it was the most important temple for kings of the area – including when they invaded, as in the case of Rajendra Chola. Nallur was the capital city of the Jaffna Kingdom and the Kandaswamy Temple the primary shrine worshipped by its sovereigns. Since many of Jaffna’s own records were destroyed during colonial rule, or taken away to Portuguese and Dutch archives from where they are yet to be retrieved, apart from this stone inscription found in Jaffna, Sinhalese and Tamil historical documents written in a much later period, circa the 15th to 17th Centuries, are the only available documents tracing the temple’s history at the moment. The Sinhalese sources predating currently available Tamil sources attributing the building of the temple to King Buwanekabahu VI can be a tetchy subject in the country. Like everything else, it has become ethnicised and politicised through a contemporary lens which does not reflect medieval Sri Lankan reality. The issue in contention being that if King Buwanekabahu VI built the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple, it could be attributed to Sinhala origins, not Tamil. King Buwanekabahu VI, however, was not Sinhalese. He was the adopted son of the previous King of Kotte and various sources place him as either an East Sri Lankan Tamil or Tamil mercenary from South India. He is known as Chempaka Perumal in Tamil sources and Sapumal Kumaraya in Sinhala sources – Tamilised and Sinhalised versions of the same name based on the fragrant yellow magnolia champaca flower from which he drew his name. A 17th-Century Sinhalese manuscript, the Mukkara Hatana, detailing the exploits of the Karava/Karaiyar caste who were once naval/military mercenaries employed by Sri Lankan kings, claims him as one of their own. His father, as per this document, was a Tamil Karaiyar chief called Manikka Thalaivan who was killed in battle, and thus he came to be adopted by the reigning King of Kotte. The Karaiyar/Karava caste of Sri Lanka claim kshatriya (royal warrior caste) lineage from India. They were employed as both navy and army to guard the nation’s maritime provinces by Sri Lankan kings. Therefore, they were settled all along the coastline of the island nation, with those in Tamil-dominant areas becoming Tamilised and those in Sinhala dominant areas becoming Sinhalised, known as the Karaiyar and Karava caste, respectively – it’s the same caste and they acknowledge kinship with each other across the ethnicised divide. Today, they are known as a fisherfolk caste, as the advent of colonialism took away their national defence role, but they still remember their warrior clan background of defending the country with pride. Closer to the present day, the Karaiyar community predominated in the LTTE, and harked back to their warrior past and valour to explain the phenomenon. Likewise, the Sri Lankan Army and Navy are predominated by the Karava caste, who also claim that their military past and might is reflected in the present. Both LTTE Leader Prabakaran and Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, the Army Commander who won the final war against the LTTE, are Karaiyar and Karava, respectively. In other words, kin. Unfortunately, in modern-day Sri Lanka, historical aspects such as these are brushed under the carpet to demarcate strong ethnic divides which do not reflect reality. The history of the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple is just one more of these politicised issues in the country presently. Be that as it may, the kings who ruled Jaffna as an independent kingdom and styled themselves the Arya Chakravartis predated the advent of Buwanekabahu VI, and took over the reign of Jaffna again when he left 17 years later to claim his kingdom at Kotte. They ruled from Nallur as before, with the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple as their central shine. The well-known travel diarists of the medieval world, the Venetian Marco Polo and the Moroccan Ibn Battuta, have left records of an independent kingdom in Jaffna with Arya Chakravarti in power when they travelled through it in the 13th and 14th Centuries, respectively.  Since the Jaffna Kingdom’s history is hotly disputed even now within the framework of the ethnicised conflict ravaging Sri Lanka, not much independent research has been done on it. Many of Jaffna’s own records disappeared during its 400-year history of colonial rule. Academics from Jaffna University surmise that many of these records could likely be found in Portuguese or Dutch archives of the time period, but while some work has been done drawing history from English colonial sources, not much effort has yet been made to extract it from the previous colonial sources of the Dutch and the Portuguese. At least one Portuguese writer named Queroze is known to have written of the existence of the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple before its sacking by his compatriots. Apart from this, colonial archives of the Dutch and Portuguese relating to their rule of Jaffna are known to exist, but citing lack of knowledge of Old Dutch and Portuguese languages as a barrier, on top of the ethnic conflict and lack of state-sponsored support for such historical research, academics in Jaffna claim not to have been able to follow up on research related to Jaffna’s colonial or pre-colonial history. Historical memory in the region though is still rife. Despite over 500 years since the deposition and execution of the last King of Jaffna, Sangili II, by the Portuguese, the names of residential areas around Nallur and its suburbs hark back to the kingdom. Panikkar Valavu, where the palace elephants were stabled; Ariyalai, where the horses were stabled; Arasadi and Rasa Veethi, where the king took his walks; Sangiliayan Thoppu and Rasavin Thottam (the king’s gardens or parks), among many others, are still extant place names in and around the Nallur vicinity. Being a densely populated area, not much archaeological surveys have been done, but Jaffna archaeologists say that remote sensory equipment would likely yield a lot of information given that just digging a little below the soil in farmlands dotting the area yields potsherds and coins of a much earlier era. Despite this, not much in the nature of archaeological surveys have been done either. A road construction in the 1970s yielded many artefacts but with the ethnic conflict then heating up, it was not followed up on. History being deeply disputed between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnicities, historians of either ethnicity do not feel able to make headway in independent research. They are regularly labelled race traitors or bigots depending on whichever side their findings might favour. This also tends to subsume the history of Muslims, whose presence in Sri Lanka also reaches back several centuries including in Jaffna. They have always been mainly a trading community in Sri Lanka, and then, as now, the State had been wary of their economic prowess. Apparently, the 18th Century Dutch Colonial Government had sought to dismantle their economic might in Nallur and set the Tamil majority in Jaffna against them, leading to the Muslims being evicted to what is now Jaffna Town in 1728. The location of the current Nallur Kandaswamy Temple was once a well-known Muslim settlement, therefore. When Don Juan Ragunatha Maapana Mudaliyar built his temple in 1734, it was in close proximity to a pre-existing tomb commemorating a Sufi saint. Muslims and Hindus alike worshipped at that shrine. The temple eventually expanded to encompass this tomb as well. According to the Muslim community in Jaffna, the temple authorities remained respectful of Muslim sentiments regarding their shrine, kept a lit lamp there in respect of the entombed saint, and gave some Muslim families exclusive camphor selling rights around the temple in recognition of their ancestral connection to the temple grounds. This was the case till 1990 when the Muslims were evicted en masse from the area by the LTTE in pursuit of their independent Tamil homeland. Many Muslims have since returned to Jaffna after the civil war ended in 2009, but while they retain historical memory of the tomb and their ancestral connections to Nallur, Sufi forms of worship have mostly been erased from their current religious practices and so they no longer seek the shrine to worship. The tomb has been walled off now and is just a memory, but scholars estimate that the Nallur phenomenon can be attributed at least in part to the existence of the tomb. While cultural memory of the phenomenon is fast getting erased among the current generations of Jaffna’s Hindus and Muslims alike, Sufi mystics were once much revered by both communities here and their tombs were considered places of potent power and prayer fulfilment. Part II of this article will be published next week. (An edited version of this article was published in “Where the Gods dwell” by Westland Books, India, tracing the history of 13 famous Hindu temples in the South Asian region)  


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