Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple

The story of Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple

The Aranmula Sree Parthasarathy Temple is dedicated to Vishnu in the form of Parthasarathy — literally ‘the charioteer (sarathy) of Partha’, Partha being a name of Arjuna, the third Pandava. It is the same aspect of Krishna who, in the Mahabharata, drove Arjuna’s chariot at the Kurukshetra war and, on that battlefield, is remembered as delivering the Bhagavad Gita. Here he is worshipped not as a warrior but as the divine friend and guide who held the horses while Arjuna fought. The presiding image is enshrined in the classic Kerala style, and in most local descriptions the deity is shown holding the conch (shankha); some traditions instead picture him with the charioteer’s whip in hand, the mark of his role at Partha’s side.

The temple is counted among the 108 Divya Desams, the abodes of Vishnu hymned by the Alvar poet-saints of the Tamil devotional tradition, which places Aranmula in an all-India network of Vaishnava shrines revered for well over a thousand years (attributed). It is simultaneously one of the five great Pandava temples of Kerala — a group in which each of the five brothers is said to have installed a form of Vishnu along the Pamba and its neighbouring rivers, with Aranmula linked specifically to Arjuna. This double identity, at once pan-Indian Divya Desam and intensely local Pandava shrine, gives the temple an unusual standing in Kerala’s sacred geography.

Architecturally the shrine follows the Kerala temple idiom — sloping tiled roofs, carved wooden panels and pillars, and a walled precinct — but it is distinguished by having four gopuram (tower) entrances facing the cardinal directions. The eastern gateway is reached by a flight of eighteen sacred steps, while the northern gateway descends by a long flight of stone steps directly to the Pamba river, so that worship and water are physically joined. Those northern steps are the stage on which much of Aranmula’s riverine ritual life plays out.

The temple’s festival calendar is bound to the river and to the Mahabharata. During the annual ten-day festival, generally in the Malayalam season around January–February, the deity is carried in procession mounted on the Garuda vahana, the eagle mount of Vishnu. In the month of Dhanu the temple observes Khandavana Dahanam, a fire ritual that re-enacts the burning of the Khandava forest from the Mahabharata, dried plant matter being gathered and set alight in symbolic remembrance.

But the event that makes Aranmula famous beyond Kerala is the Uthrattathi Vallamkali, the sacred snake-boat regatta held on the Pamba as part of the Onam season, typically in the Malayalam month of Chingam (around late August to September). Unlike the competitive spectacle of the Nehru Trophy at Alappuzha, Aranmula’s race is first of all an act of temple service: the long, low palliyodam boats — ‘temple boats’ belonging to riverside village churches of the deity — carry oarsmen who row not for a prize but as an offering to Parthasarathy, singing the vanchipattu boat-songs as they come. Each palliyodam is treated as sacred to the temple, and the fleet is associated in tradition with the deity himself.

Aranmula’s other great gift to the world sits just outside the sanctum’s ritual life but is inseparable from the town: the Aranmula Kannadi, a handmade metal-alloy mirror polished to reflect from its front surface rather than through glass. It was the first product from Kerala to receive a Geographical Indication tag, and its making is held as a closely guarded craft secret of a few Aranmula families — a small, gleaming emblem of the same town whose temple gives it its name.

Legend & myth

Legend tells that Arjuna, seeking to atone, undertook a long penance and was rewarded with an image of Krishna. To bring the idol to its resting place he is said to have floated it downriver on a simple raft lashed together from six lengths of bamboo — aaru mula in Malayalam, ‘six pieces of bamboo’ — and from that raft, the story holds, the place took its name: Aranmula. The tradition of the idol arriving by water is remembered as the Thiruvona Thoni, the sacred Onam boat.

A second, much-loved legend explains the snake-boats. It is said that a devout Brahmin vowed to supply everything needed for the Thiruvona Sadya, the great Onam feast offered to Parthasarathy, and to send it upriver in the Thiruvona Thoni. On its voyage the boat was set upon by hostile factions — and the snake-boats of the surrounding villages rowed out to escort and protect it, delivering the offerings safely to the temple. From that rescue, tradition says, the grand custom of the palliyodam regatta was born, which is why the boats row to the temple to this day rather than merely against one another.

These accounts are cherished sacred legend rather than documented history; the Divya Desam and Pandava-temple identities are matters of long attributed tradition, while the Uthrattathi Vallamkali and the Aranmula Kannadi are living, well-documented realities.