The elephant under the jambu tree
An elephant came every day to a linga of Shiva that stood beneath a jambu tree. It drew up water in its trunk and washed the linga clean, and that was its worship.
The account, as Incredible India publishes it, uses the episode to explain the temple's name: Jambukeswara, the lord of the jambu tree. The older name of the place keeps the other half of the story. In the Tevaram the shrine is Tiruvanaikka — ānaikkā, the grove of the elephant — and Appar sings it as standing upon the long-flowing Ponni, the Kaveri.
Water runs through every part of the story, and through the temple. The linga in the sanctum today is reported to stand in water that flows in from a spring. That is the feature by which the temple is counted as the water shrine of the Pancha Bhoota set.
The fuller tradition attached to this temple — of a spider that also worshipped the linga, its quarrel with the elephant, and its rebirth as the Chola king Kochengat Chola, as told in Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam — is not told here, because we have not yet read it in that text.
Where this account comes from
- Government: Ministry of Tourism, Government of India — Incredible India, "Tiruchirappalli — spiritual (Thiruvanaikaval / Jambukeswarar-Akilandeswari Temple)" prod.incredibleindia.gov.in · seen 2026-10-09
- Hymn: Tevaram, Sixth Tirumurai 6.62 (Tiruvanaikka), Tirunavukkarasar (Appar); text and V. M. Subramanya Aiyar's English translation on thevaaram.org thevaaram.org · seen 2026-10-09