Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple

Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple

The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple is in Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India. The temple is dedicated to Lord Ranganatha. Srirangam is the foremost of the eight self-manifested shrines of Lord Vishnu. It is the first, foremost and the most important of the 108 main Vishnu temples. This temple is also known as Bhoologa Vaikundam, Bhogamandabam.  The temple is large in size. The temple is surrounded by the Kaveri River and its tributary Kollidam.

Srirangam is a holy place. The Temple is the Number One shrine among the 108 Divya Desams. It’s a home to Srivaishnavites. This is the only temple where we can find Lord Vishnu in sleeping posture. Srirangam has got importance because of this temple.  It has seven prakaras or enclosures. This is the only temple in India to have seven prakaras.The seven prakaras represent the seven c the seven elements that make up the human body, at the heart of which is the soul of body.

Ramanuja Swamy lived and worshipped at Srirangam long back. He attained Moksh (no re-birth by residing at the feet of Lord) after the end of his life. Then his student retained his body with mummification using medicinal herbs. But mythology explains that his corpus arose out of the earth with no human intervention.Aacharya Ramanuja Swamy is in a separate sannadhi (temple) in the Srirangam Temple. The holy ceremony of applying saffron with Cinnamon camphor on the divine corpus of Aacharya Ramanuja Swamy is celebrated twice in a year.

How to reach:

Srirangam has a railway station. It can be reached from Chennai through any of the major trains traveling in the Chennai-Kanyakumari. The approximate journey time from Chennai is about 5 hours. The nearest airport is Trichy / Tiruchirapalli International Airport. From the bus stand, tourists can avail local buses, taxi, and auto rickshaw to reach Srirangam.