The Thamizh Language is in Ego-Driven Terminal Decline

How else can I justify what is written in the photograph shown below:

 

If at all one needs to know what the “inscription” (I am using this word loosely, as “inscription” is sculpted out of a stone) on the arch says, I translate casually as, “The most spiritual entrance edifice of all the temples in the world; this was completed under the leadership of so-and-so of such-and-such organization”.

In fact, the name of the leader runs across almost two lines of the “inscription” (which “owns” everything that is “supposed” to belong to the deity, Lord Sriranganathar.

I admit, with pride, that the photo shows the கோபுரம், as majestic and reaching out to touch the sky. 

Given below is the exact first line in Thamizh:

உலகிலேயே மிக உயர்ந்த ஸ்ரீரங்கம் ராஜகோபுரம் கட்டி  முடித்த ...

It is the word உயர்ந்த (the third word) that offends, and offends seriously. The temple entrance edifice (கோபுரம்) is marked for its spiritual significance, and not for being the tallest in the world (because other taller towers do not carry the spiritual significance of the edifice – The Burj Khalifa; the One World Trade Centre in New York; the Tokyo Sky Tree; the Tokyo Tower; the piers of Millau Viaduct in France; the Eiffel Tower (I do not need to locate it for the readers).

 The word உயர்ந்த here can mean only that the object Elevates one's spiritual sense ; and not on the physical hierarchical metric; to state simply the word does not signify Elevation in the physical sense.

OK, then, what should have been the word if it was to mean the tallest? Glad you asked:

உலகின் மிக உயரமான - tallest. Nothing more. It keeps spirituality at arm’s length.

There was a time, perhaps I was in my early teens, one of my aun’t brothers-in-law (she has five) and I were visiting Thiruvannamalai during summer (not a good thing to do). They took pride in the height of the temple entrance edifice (கோபுரம்) and claimed that it is taller than the same at the Ekambareswarar Temple in Kanchipuram, where I was studying. I felt small.

Slowly it dawned on me that the above comparison can mean only one thing: the height of the கோபுரம் is a temporal measure. No king would have built a கோபுரம் that is shorter than the one that is existing and carrying the pride of place (for me, pride and the place of supplication, at temples do not go together; yet...). Therefore, the Ekambareswarar Temple is older than the Arunachaleswarar Temple at Thiruvannamalai.

Then I have to prove what I claimed above. Go to the picture at the beginning. The religious head was born in 1884-1885. Let us assume he would have been about 70 yeras old when the Rajagopuram at Srirangam would have been built.

There goes my proof my thesis: age-wise, from the oldest to the newest,  it is Ekambareswarar, Arunchaleswarar and then Sriranganathar. Of course, the power of the king would also have mattered; but that goes by the wayside when ego is hurt (just as it did for me when I was a teen).

Yet, I stand tall at 155 cm, and the meaning of the title is evident!

Raghuram Ekambaram