Have you ever heard of a deity named 'Idiot'? Here is one at the village Periyakuyili.
Coimbatore: Philomela, a popular character in Greek mythology was seduced by king Tereus, her brother-in-law, who also cut her tongue to hide his guilt. Nevertheless, the girl revealed his crime to her sister by working out the incident in detail on a piece of tapestry.
Seeking revenge, her sister Queen Procne killed her son Itys, and served him up for Tereus’s supper! On learning of his wife’s gruesome act, the angry king tried to kill the two sisters. But the Gods, taking pity on them, transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale.
While the nightingale is a metaphor for this speechless girl in Western mythology, Koel or Indian cuckoo, another singing bird, is interestingly the name of two villages on the outskirts of Coimbatore - Periya Kuyili and Chinna Kuyili.
“The name of the Goddess in the temple is also ‘Kuyilathal’ “informs Maraal, a sweeper in the village shrine Kuyilamman Koyil.
The illiterate woman, who does not know even her exact age, says,
''Our ancestors in the village would tell us that the idol had come out of the earth while a farmer was ploughing his field in a bygone era. From then on, the people of our village began worshiping the Goddess as Kuyilathal by constructing a shrine for her ".
However, citing similar discoveries, the late noted epigraphist D.Sundaram once opined that the idol could be that of a woman who sacrificed her life for a noble cause in the village.
Reaching the shrine after a tiring car trip on the road passing through the arid land in the villages of Edyarpalayam and Kallapalayam, the epigraphist deciphered an inscription on a stone pillar in the shrine.
The inscription can be read even by a Tamil-reading schoolboy since it is of a recent period dating back only to 1922. The inscription records that a man by the name Ranga Boyen of Kanna Palayam made an Oonjal (swing), and presented it to the deity Kuyilathal on the 28th of the Tamil month Aadi.
Sundaram would say that placing the idol on the swing and gently rocking it is the common way of worshiping the deity. Moreover, the people believe that the Goddess Kuyilathal enjoys herself being on the swing under a neem tree after everyone in the village goes to bed at night.
A man with a passion for stone inscriptions, Sundaram, got a memorial stone cleaned by his friend Jaishankar, who was assisted by Subramaniam, a non-Brahmin Pandaram priest at Periyakuyili. However, the monument which stands half buried on a farm does not have the beginning of the inscription. It must have been on another block of stone which is now missing.
While rationalist leader Periyar E.V.Ramasamy said, "Kadavulai Padaithavan Muttal “ (The one who created god was an idiot), at Periyakuyili, a deity himself is called an idiot, as the villagers call him Muttaal Raakkiyappan!
Seeking revenge, her sister Queen Procne killed her son Itys, and served him up for Tereus’s supper! On learning of his wife’s gruesome act, the angry king tried to kill the two sisters. But the Gods, taking pity on them, transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale.
While the nightingale is a metaphor for this speechless girl in Western mythology, Koel or Indian cuckoo, another singing bird, is interestingly the name of two villages on the outskirts of Coimbatore - Periya Kuyili and Chinna Kuyili.
“The name of the Goddess in the temple is also ‘Kuyilathal’ “informs Maraal, a sweeper in the village shrine Kuyilamman Koyil.
The illiterate woman, who does not know even her exact age, says,
''Our ancestors in the village would tell us that the idol had come out of the earth while a farmer was ploughing his field in a bygone era. From then on, the people of our village began worshiping the Goddess as Kuyilathal by constructing a shrine for her ".
However, citing similar discoveries, the late noted epigraphist D.Sundaram once opined that the idol could be that of a woman who sacrificed her life for a noble cause in the village.
Reaching the shrine after a tiring car trip on the road passing through the arid land in the villages of Edyarpalayam and Kallapalayam, the epigraphist deciphered an inscription on a stone pillar in the shrine.
The inscription can be read even by a Tamil-reading schoolboy since it is of a recent period dating back only to 1922. The inscription records that a man by the name Ranga Boyen of Kanna Palayam made an Oonjal (swing), and presented it to the deity Kuyilathal on the 28th of the Tamil month Aadi.
Sundaram would say that placing the idol on the swing and gently rocking it is the common way of worshiping the deity. Moreover, the people believe that the Goddess Kuyilathal enjoys herself being on the swing under a neem tree after everyone in the village goes to bed at night.
A man with a passion for stone inscriptions, Sundaram, got a memorial stone cleaned by his friend Jaishankar, who was assisted by Subramaniam, a non-Brahmin Pandaram priest at Periyakuyili. However, the monument which stands half buried on a farm does not have the beginning of the inscription. It must have been on another block of stone which is now missing.
While rationalist leader Periyar E.V.Ramasamy said, "Kadavulai Padaithavan Muttal “ (The one who created god was an idiot), at Periyakuyili, a deity himself is called an idiot, as the villagers call him Muttaal Raakkiyappan!