Athi Varadar

A special festival of Athi Varadar is being celebrated in the temple town of Kanchipuram. Kanchipuram is located 72 km from Chennai.

The temple town has been gearing up for organizing the Athi Varadar festival for quite a few years.

The 48-day festival commenced on July 1 and will go on till August 17.

What is special about the temples?

• The idol of the Lord Athi Varadar made out of fig tree in his reclining posture kept in a silver casket underwater in the temple tank of the famous Kanchipuram Sri Varadaraja Perumal Temple.
• The temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu, is one of the Divya Desam shrines (108 temples of Vishnu) believed to have been visited and patronized by the 12 Vaishnava Tamil poet/saints -Azhwars.
• A great exponent of Visishtadvaita philosophy, Sri Ramanujam, is also believed to have lived in this temple.

What will happen nows?

• There is a massive surge of people who come from all across the country to have a glimpse of the Athi Varadar idol.
• This has alarmed the Kanchipuram authorities to be better prepared with all necessary arrangements for the festivals.

The small town of Kanchipuram certainly couldn t hold more than one lakh devotees every day and was expecting close to 30,000-50,000 devotees per day, but on an average, an almost double the people of people are turning up daily to visit the temple town.