Famous Temples in India

Religious Significance

Curse of Talakad : There is an interesting story behind Talakad’s sand dunes. “Let Talakad become sand. Let Malingi (a village near cauvery) become a whirlpool and let the Mysore kings not have any children”. This is the curse uttered by the wife of a defeated viceroy of Vijayanagar Empire on Raja Wodeyar of Mysore 400 years ago. The wife of viceroy the queen Alamelamma who was a widow was a great devotee of the goddess Ranganayaki at Sri Rangapatna. She used to send her ornaments every Friday to decorate the goddess. On a certain Friday she did not send the diamond ornaments and the King of Mysore sent an army of men to bring the ornaments forcefully. It is said that he had an eye on the diamond jewels. Being helpless the queen tied all the ornaments to her saree and jumped in to the river Cauvery near Malingi uttering the curse. As she did not want anyone to take the ornaments, she cursed that Malingi become a whirlpool and to prevent the soldiers from reaching her, she cursed that Talakad become sand. To this day Talakad is full of sand and every time there is the panchalinga worship to be done temples are excavated from the sand mounds.

Mythology of Vaidyanatheshwara Temple: As the legendary narrates, a puritan named Somadatta with his disciples was killed by a herd of elephants while they were doing their penance when they were on the pilgrimage to this temple. In the turn of rebirth they were born as elephants in the same region/forest and continued to worship Lord Shiva in the form of a tree in the forest. This tree is supposed to be a silk cotton tree. Once the two hunters named Tala and Kadu watched these elephants performing the rituals to this silk-cotton tree and attempted to cut down this tree out of curiosity. But immediately found the tree bleeding and heard a divine voice proclaiming that the tree was the form of Lord hence the hunters were advised to stop cutting. Thus the hunters stopped cutting and covered the wound with fruits and leaves to heal. Later the blood miraculously turned into milk and got healed completely. The hunters Tala and Kadu attained salvation here, from then the place was known as Talakadu. As the Lord in the form of tree healed himself, he got to be known as Vaidyanatha or Vaideeshwara. The word vaidya in Sanskrit means doctor and the Lord Vaidyanatha became the lord of doctors.