Narasimha is a man lion ..human amphibian combination.
Asura or demon Hiranyakashipu had always hated Vishnu who had destroyed his brother Hiranyakha as a varaha or pig avatar in a previous story .
All these may amuse people why we have such umbelievable stories but most Hindu religious stories arenot just that .
They have several layers of truths meant for several levels of intellectuality and spiritual accomplishments .
At times these demons are in our mind and its our conscious self the divine spark which needs to take these avatars to root them out .
There are not many temples with narasimha avatar as its deity .
One of those is in Thuravoor on road from Aroor to Alleppey ...
Hiranyakashapu has some much powers he gets from Brahma after his long hard penance.
He cannot be killed by man or animal neither during day or night or inside or outside house or building .
Very wise indeed .
But then he forgot who he hated was .
So the Lord took a human animal combo came oit of a pillar in midnight sharp neither day nor night .
Prahalada had told his father Hiranyakashapu Vishnu was everywhere when asked in pillar or in rust .
The temple was supposed to have existed for long .
Records exist from 2 to 4 th century .
The Ollikara mana is the traditional namboothiri family who were the temples custodians for centuries .
We did meet one lady from the family who invited us to her ancestral wooden house close to the temple with small idols inside too ..
Though the Travancore Dewaswom manages the temple these days .
Since it was in border of Cochin kingdom and Travancore and Trivandrum royal family owned it there was an unwritten law that the day Travancore raja visited the temple they would need to return it to Cochin .
So no Travancore kings ever came to the temple .
Sri Chitra Thirunal in 1957 was first king to do so and he too walked on a red carpet to symbolically keep with the promise .
The temple is unique as it has two sanctum sanctorums with two deepastambhams
One for Narasimhamurthy and other for Sudarsanamoorthy
Sudarsanamoorthy existed from first century but Narasimhamoorthy was built by a chera king in 7 th century .
One is sqaure and other round .
Fine carvings decorated thier walls
The Narasimha murthy sanctum has low roof and one needed to bend while walking inside .
Sastha was outside and also naga idol was on one side with a folk singer .
Lamps are built all along the outer wall and a huge pond is seen in the temple ..
There also is a huge elephant pandhal the biggest in Kerala
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