The Mucukunda Murals: In the Tyagarajasvami Temple, Tiruvarur

On the ceiling of the Devasiraya Mandapam in the third prakara of the Tyagarajasvami Temple in Tiruvarur, an unfinished set of around 50 painted panels depicts the story of the monkey-faced Chola king Mucukunda, who is said to have brought the god Tyagaraja from heaven down to Tiruvarur. The story is well documented in medieval Tamil texts such as Kantapuranam of Kacciyappa civacariyar and Campantamunivar's Tiruvarurppuranam.The paintings, although in a shockingly dilapidated condition, are among the best surviving examples of late-Nayaka or early Maratha-period murals. Along with offering a distinctive version of the Mucukunda story (together with inscriptions that accompany each panel and embody directions to the painters), these murals express a distinctive cultural and philosophical vision—one in which we can observe the new subjectivity of the seventeenth century, with its spatial and pictorial correlates, and a particular understanding of the possibilities open to human beings in relation to the depths of their own consciousness, on the one hand, and the divine realm, on the other.