RURALS STUDY THIRUNANGUR

Place: Thirunangur Reported by: M.Tharangini,3rd year

Date: 28 October 2021

INDEX

 INTRODUCTION
 HISTORY
 VILLAGE-THIRUNANGUR
 SETTLEMENT
 TEMPLE-LORD VISHNU TEMPLE
 LORD SHIVAN TEMPLE
 SOCIO ECONOMICS AND CULTURE
 ABOUT FESTIVALS AND RITUALS
 THAI
 VAIKASI
 CHITHIRAI
 PURATAASI
 HOUSING
 PHYSICALS
 VISUALS
 CONCLUSION AND INFERENCE

Introduction:

The rurals study was organized by our college-Prime nest college of architecture and planning on 17
October 2021 – 22 October 2021 at Thirunangur. It’s a 6 days study trip. The main purpose of this rurals
was to study about the history of the village, its planning, people who belongs there , house and its
types in Thirunangur. Thirunangur is a village in mayilaaduthurai district in tamilnadu. Thirunangur is
cluster of 4 villages,so it is named as nangur. It is said to be 2000 years or 20century old.
Thiru - dhivastalam

Nangur - cluster of nangur , thirumanipuram , melnangur and narayanapuram.

History:

Village-Thirunangur

Actually the name of this village was Naapori, then it was changed as Naagaoor, and then now it was
named as Nangur.the name came because of the Thanjan Nagarajan(sanke) lived here.

Time line:

 Before cholas - 7th century

 cholas - 8 - 12 th century
 pandyas - 12 - 13 th century
 vijaynagar - 14 - 15 th century
 nayaks - 15 - 18 th century
 british - 17 - 19 th century

Settlement:

In this village 4000 brahmins were also lived. Nangur seems to be an important settlement of the
sangam age. The sangam age king Karikalan, married the daughter of Nangur vel, chief of Nangur village.
Thirunangur is said to be the agraharam(Chaturvedimangalams) of poombuhar. And in the name of
the village thiru stands for respect- Lord vishnu and Shivan because in this village, they have 6 Divya
desam from 108 Divya desam. And the temple’s was there from the age og Mahabaratham – 8 to 9
century.

The 6 Divya desam:

 Narayana perumal temple-32 Divya desam

 kudamadum kuthar-29 Divya desam
 Pallikonda perumal temple-36Divya desam
 Van purushothamar temple-30 Divya desam
 Vaigundanathar temple-33 Divya desam
 Sempon arangar temple-31 Divya desam

Temple-

Lord vishnu temple:

Sempon arangar temple was in the year of 1278 to 1287. From these temple Narayana perumal temple-
32 was said to be the 1st Lord vishnu temple discovered in this village. These lord vishnu temple are
formed by a story that one day alvar came to this place to visit lord vishnu but he was not there so, alvar
said that I won’t go untill I get the blessings from you ,so vishnu gave him the blessing in different
form/shape/structure and this type giving the blessing is said to be the name called “Archei”. Lord
vishnu is also called as Perumal or Thirumal in tamil. Divya desam is said to be Lord vishnu temple which
each temple has 10 poetry by tamil poets, then only the temple is considered in the list of Divya desam,
the name of the poet is Thirumangai alvar. All the Lord vishnu temple are facing east side, and the
temple was built by the stick and string technique where the stick is placed vertically in land in the
morning and due to the sun’s light the direction was came and they have built.

Lord shivan Temple:

And shivan temple is formed by a story that Dakshan(Parvathi’s dad) was doing yaaga and in that time
Uma(Parvathi) asked her father that to invite Lord Shiva for this yaaga but her father will not accept , so
Uma will sacrifice her in this yaaga. Because of this Lord Shiva got anger and danced in fury at this place
after the death of his wife Uma, so on that time his hair fall in some places and on that 6 places are in
this village. So these 6 places are formed as the Shivan temple. There are only 2 shivan temples are
discovered and the other are yet to discover but they are saying that rest of the temples are belived to
be there. The 2 Shivan temples are Nambuvaruku anbar temple, Mathangeeshwarar temple. All the
people and the temples in this village are mostly depends on Agriculture. This village is famous for
Tamarind rice and Garuda sevai ritual (festival). It was a very well planned study and many students
were there in study.

The team of 3 or 4 members of student and 4 teachers were present in the location. And mam gave an
informative speech about the rurals study, what/how to do in site.

Teams are

 Socio economics and culture

 Housing
 Physicals
  Visuals

Socio economics and culture:

In this socio team have collected all the history of this village and also they have done the survey for
many houses to know how the people here are living , their lifestyles and their activities and some
general informations about them. And also they have collected information about the festivals/ rituals
done in separate months and what are the activities they do.

About Festivals and Rituals :

Thai-On this the main rituals is Garuda sevai which is for 3 days after ammavasai. In the month Jan-
Feb(Thai). Day-1 -alvar will come and visit 11 Lord vishnu temple hence here only 6 temple are there he
will visit this 6 temple in this village.

Day-2 -11 Lord vishnu’s visit alvar

Day-3 -alvar will go to his place where he came from.

Vaikasi-In the month May-Jun(Vaikasi) 1st Monday the ritual name Kaali katti will be done for 1 day and
it has been done here 5 years once. This one has a outer structure like a kaali and the people who are all
getting wishes from god will be there inside for one day without food, but they will come out to drink
water sometimes.

Chithirai-Sivan thirukalyanam marriage for all Shivan at the same time, this also done in the vaikasi
month. In the month of mid April- May(Chithirai) 1 st Friday Maariyaman thee mithi, the people here will
be walking on the top of a more heated stones or in the fire ashes which are still in flame, they will be
doing thos to get their wishes to come true. And Narayana perumal temple rituals also done in this
month.

Purataasi-In the month September- October(Purataasi) Una perumal temple has the rituals done and
also Golu are kept and worshipped for Lord vishnu. So these are the histories and etc are collected by
socio economic. They have collected a lot.

Housing:

The housing team have done the documantation of some houses and the mainly takenn street for
housing is Neduntheru and nadu theru. Mostly in this street the houses are in the traditional form of
buildings. That is they have drafted the plan, section, elevation of the traditional house. And they have
done a very well and good documentation.
Physicals:

The Physicals team got all the plan wise details and mostly all the details in road pathways, electricity
ways, water ways, drainage ways or set up, and other plan related informations are collected by them.
And they also have done good.

Visuals:

The last but not least team is Visuals team, they have done all the sketches and vedio shots. They mostly
do the work to give a live feel in their work sheet. They also done good. Visuals team have taken a drone
shot of aal the team members covering and this a new type of approach and this one was seem to be
nice. And also we have collected a lots og construction materials and also the vernacular materials, and
very old year type materials. This was so useful to study the material type in live with both visually and
physically.

Conclusion and Inference:

Form this we have learnt a lot about the construction, the construction materials, the construction
techniques, and about the planning of the village, history of the village. The village is said to be half side
of 6 Lord vishnu temple and other side of Shivan and ither temples. And the planning if this village is said
to be in the grid iron pattern. And in this most of the temples are facing East side. And also we have
learnt for the 1st time how to talk to people(unknown people). Also we learnt how to speak to different
types of people and they are giving the mode of information to us in different ways and we learnt to
understand them, because 1st it was difficult to be in their flow of the speech to understand but now we
learnt it. And this we have confirmed that the name of this village came from snakes, because we saw
more snakes in this village frequently and more snails, more Railroad worms, that is we saw more
reptiles and so we have a live confirmation for this name of the village. And we also learned how to
study a large scale type of housing projects for the 1 st time. And we gained knowledge from many
resource person like Elango sir, Jayabalan sir, and his brother who studied archeology and worte a book
about thirunangur and got famous but un fortunately we can’t meet him because he is no more but he
is still alive in this village and in these people heart because of his dedication to this village and he is the
1st person to write a book about thirunangur, Ravi sir and also some of the bhramin’s and more aged
person. And also we have enjoyed the rurals study and at the same time we also learnt something more
new in these 6 days than the other days. We had a different experience and we had a different mode of
study and it was 1st a little bit harder to understand due its large scale but after that we all have mostly
done our work with full understanding. It was a well and good nice study trip.