Sugavaneswarar Temple Salem - Shiva Temple

The Sugavaneswarar temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva in the name Sugavaneswarar along with his consort Goddess Parvathi as Maragathavalli (Swarnambigai). It is a reasonably big sized temple and one of the primary landmarks of the town. The legend is that Lord Brahma was preaching holy books to some of the sages and Shuka Muni (the king of parrots) was one among them. He was not in attention to the details and interrupted the discourse most of the time. Unable to control the anger, Lord Brahma cursed him to turn into a parrot. Brahma said that he would be relieved of the curse when he worshiped Lord Shiva at Papanasam. One day Sage Sukha came along with other parrots to worship Shiva.

A hunter seeing this wanted to drive away all the parrots and so, they all hid in the nearby ant hill. Hunter started attacking the parrots while Sage Shuka spread his wings over the lingam to protect it. In this attempt he was killed and the Lingam also was damaged on tilting. Thus, Sage Shuka was relieved of his curse and he pleaded Shiva to stay there in the name of Sugavaneswarar (Lord of parrots). Also in history, the monarchs of the three great Tamil kingdoms, the Chola, Chera and the Pandya kingdoms visited this shrine to attend the marriage of the adopted daughter of Tamil poetess ‘Avvaiyar’. This temple is believed to date back to over 2000 years ago. This site draws the tourist for its significance from the lingam portion of the deity, which is slightly slanting.