Mani-gandeswarar at Hari-chakkara-puram

 The temple features:

This temple is located in Hari-chakkara-puram, 12 kms in the south western direction from Kanchipuram.
The carpet area of the temple is 64,800 sqft and the entrance is built on the eastern side. It has a five stage tower and two corridors.(Pragarams)
The deity is called Manigandeswarar and it is said that it is self incarnated in the east facing pose. The Lord's consort Devi Anjanashi has separate sanctum in the south facing pose. The temple tree is Bilvam and the theertham is called Chakkara-theertham.There are 80 stone inscriptions here giving details of the kshetram

The saint who sang hymns on the Lord:
Thiru-gnana-sambandhar and Thiru-navukarasar

Legend:
Once Sri Vishnu fought a war with Sage Dhudesi for his devotee king Kuban. It was a long war. Finally Sri Vishnu lost his patience and launched his Sudharsana Chakkaram on sage Dhudesi. But the sage had very strong powers because of his true penance and the chakkaram (Disc) became stilted. Lord Vishnu was defeated in the war and he was very sad about his disc.

Then Vishnu came down to the earth and did Puja with lotus flower to the Lord Siva in this place. Every day he used to do puja with one thousand and eight lotus flowers and it was going on for long years. One day Lord Siva wished to test the devotion of Vishnu and hence he hid a lotus from his plate. Vishnu was doing puja and found there was one flower missing. Lord Vishnu without further thought just plucked off one of his eyes and did puja with it instead of the Lotus flower.

Lord Siva called Vishnu as Kannan (Kann means eye in tamil laguage) and appeared before him and also gave back the chakkaram to him. Because of this incident this place is called Hari Chakkara puram and the Deity of Vishnu is called 'Kamala nayana perumal' (kamala nayanam means lotus eye in sanskrit language) here.

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