Tiruttani is where the fighting stops. The name is read as seru and thani, anger, and its sating, and the tradition is that Murugan came to this hill after Tiruchendur to let the war go out of him. It is the abode of the cooling down, and it is also where he married Valli.
What is special here
·
The abode of anger settling: the temple of after-the-battle
·
365 steps, one for each day of the year
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Murugan holds a thunderbolt here, not the vel, and rides an elephant
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The midnight New Year puja, with turmeric applied to the steps
·
Open all day without a midday break, unlike most of the six
Chapter 1
365 steps
The temple stands on Thanigai hill, reached by 365 steps, one for each day of the year, as Swamimalai's sixty stand for the years of the cycle. A nine-tiered gopuram rises over the entrance.
The iconography is unusual in two ways. Murugan holds a vajra, a thunderbolt, rather than the vel he carries almost everywhere else; and he rides an elephant, Airavata, rather than the peacock. Only Swamimalai shares the second of those.
Unlike most of the six, the temple stays open through the middle of the day without the long afternoon closure, which makes it the easiest of them to fit into a journey.
Chapter 2
What is remembered here
After the defeat of Surapadman on the shore at Tiruchendur, tradition holds that Murugan came to this hill and stayed until the anger of the battle had left him. The reading of the name, seru, anger; thani, sated or cooled, carries that account.
Here too he married Valli, the hunter's daughter, having come to her in the form of a hunter himself. Of the two marriages, this is the one that is courted rather than arranged, and it gives the hill a different temperature from Tirupparankundram's.
These are devotional narratives. What is plainly observable is the character they have given the place: pilgrims come to Tiruttani for quiet far more than for spectacle.
Chapter 3
The year at Thanigai
At the turn of the year a puja is performed at midnight and turmeric is applied to the steps of the hill, and the pilgrimage on foot to this shrine is among the largest gatherings in the Tamil calendar. Access to the hill changes completely on those days, and anyone planning an ordinary visit should avoid them or plan for them deliberately.
In Aadi a three-day festival brings processions up from the foothills. In Margazhi the ritual bathing of Murugan before the marriage to Valli is observed. The Brahmotsavam carries him out on a succession of mounts across its days.
Chapter 4
The day here
The temple's published day runs from a five o'clock Viswaroopa pooja, before the six o'clock public opening, which the temple's own record states plainly, through Kalasandhi, Uchikkala and Sayaraksha, each comprising the bathing, the adornment and thiruvamuthootal, the food offering.
The day closes with the Palliyarai pooja, when the processional deity is placed in the palanquin for the swing service. It is a small, late, unhurried thing, and worth staying for if the climb down in the dark does not trouble you.
Chapter 5
In the poems
Arunagirinathar composed here in the Thiruppugazh, as he did at all six. The hill has one further association outside the devotional record: the philosopher and second President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, was born in this town.
Stories told of this place
Our reflection: the six abodes are usually visited as a set, and in that sequence Tiruttani is the one people rush. It is the only one whose entire meaning is that you have stopped. Give it an unhurried afternoon rather than an hour between two other temples.
History from public reference sources and the temple's HR&CE record; the anger-cooling and Valli narratives are devotional tradition.