Seeveli - Elephant Procession At Vaikom Temple, Kerala

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Seeveli at Vaikom Mahadeva temple! Click on the pictures to have a better view please.

A relative of mine is from Vaikom (Kottayam, Kerala) and she had been asking me to attend the famous Vaikkaththu Ashtami festival at the ancient Shiva temple there.  As you know by now, I am a fan of elephants and was happy I attended this festival, because the main attraction of this festival is Seeveli - the procession of the temple deity (Utsava murthy), on the temple elephant.  

The temple is quite huge and the details of the temple is here.

Vaikom Mahadeva Temple.

The temple is believed to be built in Treta yuga. The area of the temple is huge and very well maintained - mainly, it was very clean even during the 12 day festival with so much crowd attending it.  The main deity - Shiva linga is 6' high with ornaments for eyes, nose etc.  The details are in the above link. I went there in the middle of the 12 day festival in November last.  The whole town had a festive look with many pavement shops on the roads surrounding the temple.  The temple had a huge auditorium where dance and music programmes held from morning to night continuously.

Dance programme at the temple. I couldn't get a place even to stand and watch!

I was there for two days and went to the temple three to four times.  I saw the crowd like this, nearly all the times!  In this age of cinema and TV, I was surprised to see so much crowd coming to the temple and watching dance and music (classical music) programmes. My niece also gave a programme of classical music here, her first stage performance, alone (she had performed in her college earlier, though).

The round garbha gruha is covered by this mural paintings of stories from mythology. I took this picture...a better version is given below!

The very very old mural paintings were redone and the details are here.  I got the above picture from here

Vaikom Shiva temple is considered as one of the largest and the oldest of all Kerala temples.  Vaikom Mahadeva Shiva Temple, along with Eddumanoor Shiva Temple and Kaduthuruthy Mahadeva Temple, is considered a powerful trisome! We visited all the three temples before Uchchi Pooja (before noon pooja), which is very auspicious!

As in Vaikom temple, Eddumanoor temple also had round garbha gruha and beautiful mural painting on the wall!

I noticed one more custom here! Normally, we do pradakshina (walking around the temple) in a complete circle.  Here, we were asked not to cross the place where the water from the garbha gruha is let out.  We had to go back and complete the other half of the circle!

This is called 'poram vilakku' (outside lamp).  This is kept in the praahara of the temple.  If we pay certain amount of money, the temple authorities will light the diyas in our name! It is fully booked for the next two years, it seems! Looks beautiful!

The outside praahaara of the temple.  Many people were carrying their footwear in their hands!

All sides of the temple walls were lighted with diyaas like this in the evenings.  It was drizzling on the day of my visit - you can notice it!  So, less lamps were burning.  Simple architecture unlike Tamil nadu temples but clean.  No pesterings from the priests or other employees of the temple too! I was in a very happy mood here mainly because of this reason.

The elephants are waiting here to join the procession, until the main elephant gets ready!

The main elephant, which is the elephant of this temple with the uthsava murthy on it!  I noticed that the elephants were fed often during the waiting period!

Uthsava murthy means, a miniature of the main deity.  Most of the Kerala temples have got their own elephants.  During Vaikkaththu Ashtami festival, the elephants from the surrounding temples too join here. We see around 7 elephants in the picture.  12 elephant procession is conducted on the 12th day, I was told.

Ankush for controlling the elephant!

I noticed the ankush with every mahout but they were not raised/used, even once when I was watching.  I saw many policemen inside and outside the temple.  The policemen who were on duty inside the temple were wearing dhoti and angavastra with a neck band which had a 'Police' tag! They were very polite while asking the devotees to move on!

Most of the people of the town never cooked at home during the festival days, it seems.  The prominent people of the town fed people in different places every afternoon.  Typical temple festival! Once my relatives lost me in the crowd...I was going behind the elephants with the camera and they were worried worried for sometime! I must go back again and watch the 12th day festival of Vaikkaththu Ashtami next year!