Sri Kala hasthi temple .

 The Panchabhootams ...five elements making a compound .

Everything we know has these five .

Earth, Fire ,Water,Air, and Akasha or Ether or Space .

Lord Sivas  personification in each of these are called Panchabhootam lingams in five temples in South India four in Tamilnadu and one in Andhra Pradesh .

Arunachala temple in Thiruvanamalai as Agni lingam depicts Fire .

Ekambareswaram temple in Thiruvarur Kanchipuram depicts Prithvi lingam or earth .

Thillai Natarajan in a dancing pose in infimity is the Akhasa lingam in Chidambaram .

Thiruanai koil temple near Thiruchirapalli represents the Jala lingam or water .

And Sri Kalahasti temple represents Vayu lingam or air .

The first four are in Tamilnadu and Sri Kalahasti in AP .

We visited Sri Kalahasti a few days back on our drive from Thirupathi and yesterday we visited Thiruvanai koil near Trichirapalli .

I had visited Arunachsla temple in Thiruvanamalai .

My blog post on it is

http://hariwrite.blogspot.com/2006/04/arunachala.html?m=1

I need to visit Ekamberesawar temple in Kanchipuram and Thillai Natarajar temple in Chidambaram 

I will describe Kalahasti now .

Some pics are from online

Sri Kala hasti is 36 km from Thirupati .

We drove back from Thirupati after darshan and reached Kalahasti .

A not very good road led us into SS Residency we had booked online .

The place was small but neat .

We met some people there who gave us advice on temple visit .

We were told by a contact to reach temple next day morning at 6am for famous Rahu Ketu pooja .

It was drizzling in morning .

Our place of stay was close to temple.

More than 100 people had gathered for the pooja this is with restricted crowd due to Covid .

After completing rituals we went and prayed in sanctum sanctorum .

Our friend Somanathan as a senior SBI officer told me he had visited the temple and he was tsken close to idol and asked to observe the fine breeze near lingam as it was a vayu lingam .

Its said that Lord Siva pleased with hard penance of Vayu or wind on the Karpoora lingam grants him three boons .

One he will personify as vayu lingam in this temple in the very same Karpoora lingam and all beings from all worlds will worship in temple .

Secondly every living thing as long as alive wil have vayu in it .

Thirdly you will be present everywhere in this world .

Theres another legend about Vayu fighting with Adi Sesha  serpent kong on superiority and Adi Sesha encircles Kailasa mountain abode of lord Siva himself .

Vayu comes as a twister or tornadoe and breaks Adiseshans hold and Ksilas is blown into pieces one of which falls here in Sti kalahasti hence called as dakshin Kailasam .

This temple is said to have existed in 5 th century AD though Rajrndra Chola rebuilt it in 11 th century .

Many contributions continued by the kkngs who ruled the region .

In 1516 Krishnadeva Rayabuilt the 100 pillared hall and 120 feet Gopura .

Temple tower collapsed in 2010 and was rebuilt .

We left Kalahasti never knowing in a few days we will visit Thiruvanaikoil .

About that i shall write shortly .