sending intersting article of our PSVP Memeber and my present favorite writer diwakars article on Hindu few years back.
I am requesting our members to write about intersting facts about their nativity place or about their place where you are living.
Visakha-Muruga link
Sir,---I read with interest Dr. Raju's article, 'Visakha Traces its name to Buddhist princess'. He has furnished rich historic details about the place. The author is right when he asserts that the place has no connection with Lord Visakheswara. In Simhachalam temple, some valuable data relating to Kulottunga Chola-I (1070-1120 AD) are available by way of two damaged Tamil inscriptions: one about the endowment by two officers of the Chola emperor for the maintenance of the Vaishnava community and another about the endowment to the temple by Tamil merchants (vide, 'The Simhachalam Temple' by K. Sundaram of Andhra University--page 172). The priests of temple are Vaishnavites, whose ancestors must have come along with Sri Ramanuja during early 11th century. In these inscriptions, there is no mention of the place we call Visakhapatnam. According to some history teachers, the name of Visakhapatnam is figuring from the start of the Ganga era of Kalinga: Ananta Varma Deva (11th-12th century). They say that Visakhapatnam was then part of south Kalinga when a war broke out between Ananta Varma and Kullottunga Chola (between 1090 and 1112 AD) in the Sarada- Swarnamukhi doab, as recorded in the Alangudi plates. This particular war has been glorified as a 'war of wars' in the Tamil poem, 'Kalingathu Parani'. The Tamil chieftains, after winning the war, sanctioned a lot of endowments to Simhachalam temple and the renamed Visakhapatnam as 'Kulottunga Chola-pattanam'. There is a Telugu-Devanagari inscription in Dhraksharama Temple which mentions this war. Another interesting note on the connection of Lord Muruga, who is also called Visakha, with this region. A few years before the above Kalinga war, there was a battle between Vikrama Chola and the south Kalinga king Bhima, who was supported by Ananta Varma. After defeating Bhima, Vikrama enshrined an idol of Muruga in the Srimukhalingam Temple. Tamil poems, Alangudi plates and the Draksharama inscription record these events and mention places like Visakhapatnam, etc., as forest routes and Mahendragiri as the southern border of Kalinga.
The name of Muruga is somehow linked up with with Visakhapatnam. At the Sankara Math in Dwarakanagar, there is a shrine for Baladandayudhapani, who is none other than Lord Muruga.