Ramanathaswamy Temple

You call it Ramanathaswamy Temple or Rameshwaram Temple, they are the same. It is one of the Char Dhams that all Indians wish to visit in their life time. The other three Dhams are - Badrinath, in Uttarakand, Dwaraka Dheesh in Gujarat and Jagannath Puri in Odisha.

It is also one of the twelve Jyotirlinga temples. The temple was expanded during the 12th century by the Pandya Dynasty and its main sanctum was renovated by the Rulers of Jaffna Kingdom. The temple has the longest corridor among all the temples in India. It was built by King Muthuramalinga Sethupathy.  Mythological accounts depict the presiding deity, the Lingam of Ramanathaswamy or Shiva, as having been established and worshiped by Rama, before he crossed his bridge to the present-day island of Sri Lanka.

According to the Ramayana, Ram, the seventh avatar of the Shri Vishnu, prayed to Shiva here to absolve any sins that he might have committed during his war against Ravana in Lanka. According to the Puranas, upon the advice of sages, Ram along with Sita and Lakshmana, installed and worshipped the lingam an iconic symbol of Shiva here to get rid of the sin of Brahmahatya incurred while killing Ravana, who was a Brahmin. To worship Shiva, Rama directed Hanuman, who was avatar of Shiva himself, to bring the Shiv lingam from Himalayas. Since it took longer to bring the lingam, Sita built a lingam made of sand from the nearby seashore, which is also believed to be the one in the sanctum of the temple. This account is well supported by the original Ramayana authored by Valmiki where it is written in Yudha Kanda.  According to another version, as quoted in Adhyatma Ramayana, Rama installed the lingam before the construction of the bridge to Lanka.

James Fergusson, an Scottish-born architectural historian, who was an important figure in the 19th-century rediscovery of ancient India  found that The temple in its present form was built during the 17th century, while the small Vimana in the west corridor belongs to the 11th or 12th century. 

The temple is one of the most famous pilgrimage sites and has several historical references about it. Ahilyabai Holker and other Maratha Kings who established rest houses throughout  Rameshwaram between 1745 and 1837 CE and donated them to the temple.

The primary deity of the temple is Ramanathaswamy or Shiva in the form of Lingam. There are two lingams inside the sanctum - According to tradition, one built by Rama from sand, residing as the main deity, called the Ramalingam, and the one brought by Hanuman from Kailash, called the Vishvalingam. Ram is said to have instructed that the Vishvalingam be worshipped first since it was brought by Hanuman - the tradition continues even today. There is also an idol of Nandi, which is a massive statue, about 17.5 feet tall.  

Like all ancient temples in South India, there is a high compound wall on all four sides of the temple premises measuring about 865 feet from east to west and 657 feet from north to south with huge towers or Gopurams to the east and the west and finished gate towers to the north and south.

The outer set of corridors is reputed to be the longest in the world, measuring about 6.9 m in height, 400 feet each in the east and west and about 640 feet in the north and the south. There are about 1212 pillars in the outer corridor. Their height is about 30 feet. The main tower or rajagopuram is 53 m tall. At the beginning, Ramanathaswamy Temple was a thatched shed. The present structure was the work of many individuals spread over a number of centuries.

There are separate shrines for Ramanathaswamy and his consort goddess Parvathi separated by a corridor. The samadhi of the great Yogi Patanjali is said to be at this temple and there is a separate shrine for him here.

Temple Tanks

There are sixty-four holy water bodies in and around the island of Rameshwaram, According to Skanda Purana, twenty-four of them are important. Taking bath in these water bodies is a major aspect of the pilgrimage to Rameswaram and is considered equivalent to tapasya. Twenty-two of them are within the Temple. The number 22 indicates the 22 arrows in Rama's quiver or Tarakash.