ExpertDabbler

I am a total alien to the world of Siddhars and Siddhar samadhis. But my uncle is a firm believer and has been visiting various Siddhar samadhis for the past four years. And thanks to my uncle I had a very interesting ‘full moon’ night about a fortnight ago.

The place my uncle took me to is called ‘Singampunari’. Singampunari is a small town just 5Km off the newly four-laned Madurai-Trichy highway before Melur, if one comes from Madurai. It takes about an hour’s drive from Madurai to reach this place. This place also falls on the Dindigul - Karaikudi route. More importantly Singampunari is the place of a famous siddhar called ‘Muthuvaduganar swamigal’ who attained samadhi in 1833. His believers have built a small temple for him in Singampunari.

The place is by no means sophisticated. The temple as such is unremarkable. But the specialty of this temple is that the pujas are conducted for this siddhar every full moon night. The puja starts at about 11 PM in the night. with 23 abhishekams to the idol. It takes about two hours for the abhshekams and 1008 ‘potri om’s. The prasadhams, the remains of whatever fruits, and flowers that devotees bring as their offerings, are distributed after the puja (well after 1 AM). Entry is free. All are treated more or less the same there - no balcony or box tickets business. I could see tired people inclining themselves on the temple walls as the abhishekams were performed. Most of the folks looked like working class. The fact that they catch public transports to come to this place after a full day’s work in the middle of the week well into mid-night for this occasion conveys their belief.
In that sense places like these are antithesis to the ISKCONS and Sripurams. This trip also made me realize that there are more people who believe in siddhars than we might assume. My uncle tells me apart from a series in sakthi Vikatan, there is not much media coverage of these places.

We returned back to my native at about 3 AM the next day.

While going to Singampunari, my uncle also showed me the samadhi of one great ‘Kuzhandhai anandhar’ in Kaalavaasal in Madurai.

Why would people visit a Siddhar samadhi in the midddle of nowehere, sacrificing a night’s sleep? Apparently, worshipping Siddhar samadhis leads one to his or her true spiritual guru. At a more material level, worshipping Siddhars is believed to be an effective shield from harmful planetary afflictions. I am not aware of any authoritative literature on Siddhars. I could find a few websites but not sure if I can rely on them completely. Much of the information on Siddhars seems to be shrouded in mystery.

At one level I do see a feeble connection between the Dargahs and the Siddhar samadhis. Loosely defined, both are Samadhis of supposedly saint-like souls though ‘wahhabism’ stoutly opposes Darga worship in Islam. I think Siddhar as a concept transcends religious boundaries. One can argue that even Jesus Christ had the elements of Siddhar, I suppose. All in all, the trip made me more curious about Siddhars, which I think is only a good thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.