Location: India Length: 7 min
The temple of Chidambaram, India, is the home of the Dancing Shiva, Lord of Cosmic Dance, Shiva Nataraja, who dances the dance of Creation and Destruction. One of India ’s largest, it is one of the very few temples practicing the Vedic tradition and rituals. This doctrine has been preserved by a community of hereditary priests, the Deekshithars, in an unbroken oral tradition dating to prehistoric times. The temple’s early history is obscure, but it reached its present form in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries under of the kings of the Chola Dynasty.
Produced in 2008 by Raja Deekshithar
Web links:
Asian Historical Architecture: A Photographic Survey (various academic sources)
Historic Treasures of Chidambaram Revealed (Raja Deekshithar)
The Temple of the Dancing Shiva (Raja Deekshithar)