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 Kannagi, the heroine of Silapathikaram, is one of the great female characters in the Tamil Sangam literature. Her name is remembered along with great satis (legendary women famed for their devotion to their husbands) like Sita, Savitri, Mandodari, Tara and Damayanti. The story of Kannagi begins at Poompuhar, where she had been living happily with her beloved husband, Kovalan. Even though there existed a deep love between Kannagi and Kovalan, Kovalan falls prey to the charms of the beautiful court dancer Madhavi and they become lovers. After falling on bad times, Kovalan is forced to leave his beloved Poompuhar and his lover Madhavi behind. He leaves for the metropolis of Madurai, in search of a livelihood with his wife Kannagi, who alone stands by him at this time of distress.
In Madurai, Kannagi gives one of her gold anklets to Kovalan to sell to get some money for their survival. While selling the anklet to the royal jeweller, Kovalan is taken as a thief and gets arrested. Actually, the Queen of Madurai had lost an identical anklet and the jeweller believes it to be that of the queen. He reports the matter to the authorities. This leads to Kovalan being arrested and awarded capital punishment and being put to death. Kannagi comes to know about the whole incident rather too late. She comes to the court of the Pandiyan king to demand justice. In the middle of the court, to prove the innocence of her husband, she breaks her second anklet and also asks for the remaining anklet of the Pandiyan queen to be broken. On breaking, her anklet is found to contain rubies while the one belonging to the Pandiyan Queen is found to contain pearls. The King realises that he has made a mistake of executing an innocent man and has made Kannagi a widow. The king dies in remorse and thus his wife meets a fate similar to Kannagi’s. Notwithstanding the fact, Kannagi curses the city of Madurai, which brought such a calamity on her. As soon as she utters the curse, the city goes into flames. After the destruction of Madurai, Kannagi seems to have left for an unknown destination.
In fact no one knew what became of her till recently, when a temple of Kannagi was discovered, on a hilltop, deep inside the reserved forest, near Tekkadi, in Kerala. Sometime in 1980 I heard that Shri. M G Ramachandran, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was not only interested in visiting the temple, but also wanted to reclaim it for Tamil Nadu. He was also corresponding with the Chief Minister of Kerala in this regard, as Kannagi has a greater presence on Tamil psyche than on the minds of the people of Kerala. However, things did not proceed very much due to interstate issues and the matter rested there. During the months of April-May 2001, when I went to Tekkadi in Kerala, for my election duty, I found that a Kannagi festival was to be conducted by the district administration on the 7th of April. I was very excited and decided to attend the festival. Till then, I was only familiar with the legendary Kannagi, but now I was going to learn about the goddess
Kannagi.
The Temple of Kannagi in Tekkadi is actually known as the Temple of Mangala Devi. It is located about 20 kilometers from Tekkadi (Periyar Game Sanctuary). Only a four-wheel drive jeep can go up the narrow and steep path through the reserved forest. The festival has been in vogue for thousands of years. However, about 100 years ago, when the British declared the forest as reserved forest the festival was stopped, as access to the temple was denied to the devotees. After they protested, the British Government once again gave them permission to visit the temple, but only once a year, on the day of the festival.
The festival
On the day of the festival, from early morning, devotees from all the neighbouring villages, dressed in their finery start trekking towards the top of the hill. By noon the festival is in full swing. On the top of the hill, in a most scenic spot, one finds a group of ruined temples made in the early Chola style. The devotees consist of both Malayalis and Tamilians. Hence the district administration arranges, a Tamil and a Malayali priest to conduct the prayers for the thronging masses. A Kannagi trust based in Madurai provided free snacks to the devotees in the form of food packets of fried rice and drinking water. Gudalur Ramaswami is the president of the trust and remembers attending the festival for the last forty years, from the time he was eleven years old. The District Authorities prepare a type of sweet pongal, which is distributed to all the devotees as an offering from the lord.
I found a lot of young women attending the festival. It is believed that if they prayed in the temple of Kannagi, they would get a good bridegroom. Many devotees have small picnics and are seen cooking a meal on top of the hill. Though this ancient festival to the goddess Mangala Devi has been celebrated for a long time, only thirty years ago it was found out that Goddess Mangala Devi was none other than Kannagi. A stone culvert containing such an inscription was found by some archeologist visiting the temple. It appears that Kannagi was the daughter of Kerala (Chera Nadu). After the destruction of Madurai she came back to live in her native place. She lived like a recluse, on the hilltop, and undertook a penance till she breathed her last. The people of the region built a small shrine in her honour and the great Chola Queen Sembiyam Mahadevi rebuilt the temple in the great Chola style, according to the legend. For me visiting the temple of Kannagi was a very heart warming experience. A character from fiction had suddenly come alive.
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