Agastya and the shrinking image
Courtallam did not begin as a temple of Shiva. According to the account the Tirunelveli district administration gives from the Puranas, the shrine here was Vaishnava, and the image in its sanctum was Vishnu.
The change comes with the sage Agastya. Agastya acts on the image itself: he shrinks the image of Vishnu, and in shrinking it converts it. What had been Vishnu becomes Kutralanathar, Shiva as the lord of Kutralam. The temple has been a Shiva temple from then on.
The account does not leave the conversion without consequences. The deity, temple tradition holds, has suffered a permanent headache ever since. The temple treats it as a daily fact of worship, within a routine of eight poojas a day, from Thiruvananthal at dawn to Arthasamam at night. Every evening the deity is given an abhishekam — a ritual bathing — with 64 different herbs, to cure it, and a herbal concoction is distributed to devotees as prasadam.
The temple's plan carries the story too. Tradition reads the conch-like shape of the building as a sign of its Vaishnava origin.
The Shaiva temple that resulted is an old one. The district administration records that the Tevaram hymns of the Pallava period mention Courtallam and its god, and that Appar, Sundarar, Gnanasambandar and Manikkavasagar sang of the place. The earliest inscriptions name the deity Thirukkutrala Perumal. The site's sacred tree, the Kurumbala, is credited to the Chola king Kochenkannan, who the district administration says planted it.
The episode explains three things a visitor meets at Courtallam: the name of the god, the evening abhishekam with its herbal prasadam, and the unusual shape of the temple itself.
Where this account comes from
- Government: District Administration, Tirunelveli, "Arulmigu Thirukkutralanathasamy Temple, Courtallam" tirunelveli.nic.in · seen 2026-10-09