A thousand years on,
the lamps are still lit.
Six articles on the worship life of a temple that has not closed for ten centuries — the daily poojas, the festivals, the Agamic rules, and the pilgrim experience.
Spiritual — overview
Brihadeeswara is, first and last, a Hindu temple in active daily worship. The architecture and the inscriptions and the UNESCO recognition are all true things about it, but they are downstream of the fact that the doors open at six in the morning and close at half past eight at night, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and the lingam in the sanctum gets a fresh ablution at noon, every day, exactly as it has done since 1010 CE.
The six articles in this pillar describe that worship life. The pooja schedule page is the most practical — most visitors find one or two of the cycles particularly atmospheric and want to plan around them. The Agama Shastra page is for those who want to understand the textual tradition the temple operates under. The Shivaratri page is for the one night of the year when the temple stays open until dawn.