Shrirangam

Island in the Cauvery River, just north of
the town of Tiruchirappalli in the state
of Tamil Nadu. The site is most famous
for the Ranganathaswamy Temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu in his form as
Ranganatha, who is sleeping on the
back of his serpent couch Shesha in the
sea of cosmic dissolution (pralaya). The
temple is built in the Dravida style of
architecture, in which the temple buildings are of modest height but cover an
immensely large area and are surrounded
by a boundary wall with massive towers
(gopurams) over each wall’s central
gateway. In the temple’s outer zones one
often finds shops and houses, making
such temples veritable cities in their
own right. The Ranganathaswamy temple has a series of seven concentric processional streets, making it one of the
largest temples in India. It was built in
stages by the various dynasties that
controlled this part of southern India—
Chera, Pandya, Chola, Hoysala, and
Vijayanagar—although the bulk of the
construction was done by the last two.
Since Vishnu’s image is that of the divine
king, it is hardly surprising that each of
these regional dynasties patronized this
site, as a way of using this divine
imagery to support and validate their
own right to rule.