Devalok
Festival story · 2 tellings · South India

The longest night: Arudra and Thiruvathira

Who is in it

Places: Chidambaram

The story, beat by beat

  1. In Margazhi, when the full moon stands with the Thiruvathirai star, the year's longest night is kept for Shiva.
  2. At Chidambaram a ten-day festival ends with the great bath of Nataraja before dawn and a noon procession of five deities.
  3. The night recalls the dance of bliss that the two sages saw at Tillai.
  4. In Kerala women fast and dance in a circle around a lamp through the night.
  5. Married women ask for their families' welfare, unmarried women for a good husband.
  6. The Kerala tradition reads the night as Parvati's union with Shiva as his equal half.

dance union women star

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Temple tradition

Chidambaram (Arudra Darshan)

South India · Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu Shaiva

The Tamil month of Margazhi has a night when the full moon sits in the star Thiruvathirai, and that is Nataraja's night. Chidambaram builds up to it over ten days and ends it at about three in the morning with the great anointing of the bronze dancer, followed at noon by a procession of five deities and an offering of a special sweet. What the temple remembers is the dance the sages saw in the forest of tillai; what the pilgrims come for is to see the dancer washed and dressed in the dark before the sun.

Thiruvathira — Wikipedia; Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram — Wikipedia

Folk documentation

Kerala Thiruvathira (women's night)

South India · Kerala Shaiva

In Kerala the same night is the women's. They fast on roots and fruit, stay awake, and dance the Thiruvathirakali in a slow circle around a lamp, clapping, singing of Shiva and Parvati. Wives keep it for their husbands' long life, girls for a husband to come, and the tradition explains the night as the one on which Parvati was joined to Shiva as an equal, the half-woman lord.

What is different here:

A domestic and women's observance centred on Parvati, with the Ardhanarishvara reading; no temple bath.

Thiruvathira — Wikipedia

Sources: Thiruvathira — Wikipedia; Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram — Wikipedia

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