Temples, Advaita, and Every Path Within Sanatana Dharma

Temples: Restoring the Heart of Every Village

Maha Periyavaa performed HIS first kumbhabhishekam in 1908, at the Jambunatha–Akilandeswari temple at Tiruvanaikoil. HE was fourteen years old.

HE performed HIS last in HIS nineties.

Read the entry for 1989 again. HE was ninety-five years old, and the chronicle records that HE witnessed that consecration standing, in the hot sun, for more than an hour.

For the millennium of Rajaraja Chola in 1984–85, HE sent a gold crown for the Rajaraja statue at Thanjavur and funded the daily worship at the Brihadeeswara temple — one custodian of Tamil civilisation saluting another across a thousand years.

Year	Temple
1908	Jambunatha / Akilandeswari, Tiruvanaikoil — HIS first, at fourteen
1923	The Akilandeswari tatanka repair, Tiruvanaikoil — a rite last performed by a Kanchi Acharya in 1846
1934	Restoration work at Banaras and Allahabad
1944	Kamakshi Amman, Kanchipuram
1947	Completion of Kamakshi's silver chariot
15 March 1968	Bhadrachalam Sri Rama temple Mahasamprokshanam — the temple renovated “in accordance with the guidance and instruction of the Acharya”
1970	Chidambaram — at HIS desire, a gold kunchitapadam kavacham set with the nine gems was adorned upon Sri Nataraja's raised foot, at a cost of three lakhs
5 July 1970	Akhilandeswari–Jambunatha, Tiruvanaikoil
5 April 1976	Kamakshi Amman, Kanchipuram
1978	The Keerti Sthamba at Kaladi, the birthplace of Adi Shankara
1981	Bhoomi Puja for the Nataraja temple at Satara
9 July 1989	Kumara Kottam Rajagopuram, Kanchipuram
23–27 January 1991	Varadaraja Punyakoti Vimanam, Kanchipuram
9 February 1992	Ekambaranatha Rajagopuram, Kanchipuram

How HE shaped the management of temples

HIS influence over the temples of India was never administrative. HE held no statutory office and issued no orders to any trustee. It worked in four ways, and it worked for eighty years.

First, by Agama compliance. By insisting that consecrations and daily worship follow the Agama sastras exactly — and by making HIS own presence at a kumbhabhishekam conditional upon it — HE gave trustees a reason to do the difficult thing rather than the convenient one.

Second, by priest welfare. The archaka welfare trust addressed the real cause of decay: a priesthood too poor to train its own sons. A temple with no trained archaka is a building.

Third, by treating restoration as a community's own duty rather than the government's problem. The rolling programme above was sustained for eight decades by nothing at all except the fact that HE would come if the work was done.

Fourth, and most characteristically, by recitation. The December 1988 order for Jatha-parayanam in eleven temples, and the Tiruveezhimizhalai arrangement described in the next section, reveal what HE actually wanted of a temple. Not a restored building — a building in which the correct words were still being said.

HIS own reason for caring about temples at all was social, not architectural:

“The temple strengthened this faith and the sense of unity — the temple which belongs to the whole village or town and which is situated at its centre. People had the feeling of togetherness in the presence of Isvara as his children.”

And to an American professor who asked why the gopurams were built so very tall:

“None of the scriptures or manuscripts can remind him of God as well as these tall towers.”

Advaita — and Reverence for Every Path Within Sanatana Dharma

Maha Periyavaa was the Acharya of an Advaita Peetham, in the tradition of Sri Adi Shankara's non-dualism. HE never softened that philosophy to be agreeable, and HE never pretended that the other darshanas were secretly saying the same thing.

What HE did instead was better, and harder. HE honoured them, HE funded them, and HE asked things of them.

The Saiva Siddhanta Adheenams

The most striking testimony in the whole record comes from three sitting heads of Saiva Siddhanta monasteries — non-Advaita pontiffs, writing in their own names.

Thiruvavaduthurai Aadheenam. Its head recalls that when he himself ascended his Peetha on 9 March 1983, Maha Periyavaa sent HIS benedictions through two srowthigals of the Math, with a rudraksha-mala and a shawl. In January 1990, midway through a yatra from Kashi to Rameswaram, Maha Periyavaa received the Ganga water with HIS own hands, fastened the Kasi-bandhana HIMSELF, and HIMSELF donned the shawl.

And then this — which may be the single finest documented act of HIS long life:

“HE made a request to us to maintain the convention of reciting the Sama Veda according to the chandas in Tiruveezhimizhalai. HE quoted the appropriate lines from the Thevaram — ‘The Lord who always recites the Sama’… As the temple is under our control, we permanently maintain, according to HIS wish, the convention of the recital of the Sama Veda through two srowthigals.”

Consider what is happening there. An Advaita Shankaracharya asks a Saiva Siddhanta monastery to restore Vedic recitation in a temple under its own control — and HE argues for it not from the Vedas but from a verse of the Tamil Thevaram, in the other tradition's own scripture and its own idiom. And the arrangement is kept to this day.

The same pontiff adds: “HIS erudite scholarship in Vedas and Thirumurais alike are deeply moving.”

Dharumai Aadheenam. Its head leaves no doubt who did the convening:

“It was HE who brought together to the Deivika Peravai all the leading pontiffs of the various monasteries in Tamil Nadu.”

Tiruppanandal Kasi Math. Its head frames the whole question the way it deserves to be framed:

“[Advaita, Ramanuja's school, Madhva's Dvaita and Saiva Siddhanta are] notionally — to be precise, just only academically — divided among themselves… there is an unmistakable unity among them.”

He also records a concrete act of the centenary: that the Kanchi Math would make offerings on a large scale to the deities in all the Siva temples sanctified by the songs of Gnanasambandhar, Appar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar on the day marking HIS hundredth year. A Smarta Advaita Math funding worship across the entire Tamil Saiva padal petra sthalam network.

And he signs off calling Maha Periyavaa “an exceptionally unique Siva Baktha.”

On 1 March 1987 the heads of the Dharmapuram, Tondaimandalam and Tirupanandal Saiva Adheenams came to HIM together, and the chronicle records “a long conversation.”

Srivaishnava

The Bhadrachalam Sri Rama temple was renovated under HIS guidance, its Mahasamprokshanam performed on 15 March 1968.
At Tirumala on 1 May 1969 HE climbed the hills for the darshan of Lord Venkatesa, and the Brahmotsavam was performed at the Math's own expense.
On 9 May 1969 HE inaugurated the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams' Hindu Dharma Prathishtan.
The Guruvara Sadas met for years at the western gateway of the Sri Varadaraja Perumal temple — a Vaishnava temple hosting an Advaita Math's weekly assembly of scholars — and HE blessed the renovation of its Punyakoti Vimanam, consecrated 23–27 January 1991.
The head of the Ahobilam Math came to HIM for darshan.

Madhva and Dvaita

Sri Sumateendra Tirtha, head of the Puttige Madhva Matha at Udupi, had darshan at Kanchipuram on 8 April 1991. And Madhva scholars had taken part in HIS Veda Sammelans from the 1940s onwards.

The framing HE chose HIMSELF

In June 1969 HE directed a nine-day conference at Madras, inaugurated by the acting President of India, V. V. Giri. Its name was the Sankara-Sanmata Conference. Sanmata — the six modes of worship: Siva, Vishnu, Devi, Ganapati, Surya and Kumara, approached as forms of the one reality, as Sri Adi Shankara Himself had harmonised them.

Which is precisely why the last three temples HE consecrated were a Murugan shrine in 1989, a Vishnu shrine in 1991 and a Siva shrine in 1992 — with Sri Kamakshi the constant of HIS whole life. It is not eclecticism. It is the doctrine of Sanmata working exactly as it was designed to work.

One human detail

At a gathering of Tamil odhuvars — the traditional reciters of the Thevaram — one singer faltered and lost his line. It was Maha Periyavaa, then in HIS late eighties, who supplied the forgotten Thevaram line from memory. And then, turning it aside:

“In the morning someone said that same thing in Sanskrit. I am getting old and forgetting things because of my age.”

An Advaita Shankaracharya of ninety, quietly prompting a Saiva reciter through the Saiva's own scripture — and then apologising for HIS memory.

HIS Regard for Other Faiths

The schoolboy who won a prize for reciting the Bible grew into a man of a very particular generosity towards those outside HIS own tradition. HIS positions are not vague goodwill. They are precise, and they are published.

“The goal must be unity, not uniformity.”

“The temple, the church, the mosque, the vihara may be different from one another. But the Paramatman who wants to grace the worshipper, whatever be his faith, is the same.”

“One big difference between Hinduism and other faiths is that it does not proclaim that it alone shows the path to liberation.”

And then there is the sentence that settles the matter. Some of HIS own disciples came to HIM with a proposal: that HE use HIS great influence to persuade the Muslim community of Kanchipuram to shift the mosque that stood near the Math.

HIS answer was four words:

“That is a temple too.”

On whether a man needs religion at all. In an interview on 24 February 1965 with the Soviet Indologist Tulaev, HE was asked whether a man with no religion, no ritual and no dogma, who “always thinks good and does good,” could attain salvation.

HE answered: “Yes.”

HE then set out a ladder of five kinds of spiritual aspirant, and placed the agnostic on the first and nearest rung, adding:

“Even if it is a total rejection of Godhood, such an aspirant is far higher than the idler who never worries about the search after truth. This is not my saying, but is said in our scriptures.”

A Shankaracharya telling an atheist, on the record, that his path is not closed — and that the person HE truly could not commend was not the unbeliever, but the incurious.

On Muslims. In 1921 at Patteeswaram, some two hundred Muslim youths of a local Islamic youth forum had performed service during a temple festival. HE had each of them brought before HIM, questioned each one individually, and honoured them with a silver cup and a dinner.

In early 1987, when HE was ninety-two, the Muslim parliamentarian and editor Syed Shahabuddin came to Kanchipuram to see HIM. The Math's own pujaris objected that the visitor was hostile to Hindus and should not be admitted. Maha Periyavaa rose and opened the door HIMSELF.

And on the day HE was laid to rest, the three-mile queue of mourners included, as one contemporaneous report recorded, “numerous Muslims in traditional headgear and several Christian nuns.”

Buddhism. Marco Pallis, the British author of Peaks and Lamas and a practising Buddhist, wrote a signed tribute for HIS seventy-sixth birthday, opening by declaring his own standpoint — “its author is a Buddhist by traditional participation and intends to speak from that angle” — and concluding: “We can all thank God that this same light still shines in Kanchi Kamakoti, and that the voice of Dharma has never been silenced in that hallowed place.” Sri Vamadev Muni, Rajaguru of Thailand, attended HIS Veda conference in October 1968. HIS Holiness the Dalai Lama came to Kanchipuram on 13 December 1987.

Christianity. Many in the West first came to know of HIM through Paul Brunton, whose books had introduced Sri Ramana Maharshi to the world. Dr Albert Franklin, the United States Consul General at Madras, presided over a Madras function on 28 February 1967 marking the diamond jubilee of HIS ascension.

On conversion HE was consistent, and unpopular with everyone: HE opposed it in both directions, and disclaimed any interest whatever in proselytising. HE did not believe that people should be moved between religions. HE believed they should be made better within the one they had.

HE was not naïve about hostility. HE observed, with something close to weariness, that the followers of other religions “speak ill of us; yet we do not respond properly to their criticism.” HE simply declined to trade in it.