Rare and Unique Putlur Angala Parameswari Temple - Chennai

Angala Parameswari Temple in Putlur near Chennai city of South India is one of the famous temples of Mother Goddess. The goddess is in the form of a pregnant woman in this temple.

Chennai, the gateway to South India, has a lot of tourist sites and important temples in and around. There is a small village named Putlur in the route of Chennai to Tiruvallur. This village has a famous temple for mother goddess - Angala Parameswari. This is a swayambu idol - meaning the idol which was formed on its own; no one made it.

A per the legend, a poor villager was tortured by a village head for the borrowed money, and he was forced to plough an infertile land. While ploughing the land full of rocks, the village noticed that blood was oozing out from a particular place, and he discovered the idol of Goddess. It is basically an ant hole (putru in Tamil - where snakes live) in the form of a woman in sleeping posture with open mouth and with the stomach like a pregnant woman. The villagers built a temple with this putru and named the goddess as Angala Parameswari (a name of Parvati - the wife of Lord Shiva). The village also got the name - Putlur.

Putlur Angala Parameswari temple is basically a village temple. It is visited by thousands of people. Especially, it will be very difficult to enter into the temple during weekends and holidays. The temple is very small. It has the putru in the form of a sleeping pregnant woman with her mouth opened inside the sanctum. Behind this idol, the stone idols of Shiva (not in the form of Linga), Ganesh, and Amman are found. As Shiva is found inside the sanctum, instead of Lion, Nandi idol is present in front of the sanctum, which is a rare thing to find in Amman (Goddess) temple. The temple has a prakara (corridor) where there is another putru (ant hole) worshipped as Goddess. There is also a small idol of Ganesha found in the corridor.