Virupaksha Cave in the summertime suffered water shortages, so Bhagavan often shifted to the Mango Tree Cave during the hot season. The availability of water near Virupaksha was an ongoing problem, even in other seasons. Once near a large black rock a little higher up the hill from Virupaksha, Bhagavan noticed dampness in the soil and suggested to Jadaswami that there might be a spring there. Jadaswami dug into the ground and found water. As the spring was further excavated, Bhagavan’s devotees worked to redirect the water, and a small cavity below it was dug out. Bhagavan would now climb this short distance from Virupaksha and collect the spring’s pristine water in his kamandalu.
Later on, as the number of residents at Virupaksha grew and Bhagavan’s mother began to cook meals for inmates and visitors, all felt the need for a more ample accommodation. A resident-devotee named Kandaswami from Kongunadu (Coimbatore district) had formerly built a thatched hut for Bhagavan near Bhagavan’s bathing place and seeing Bhagavan making many trips up and down the hill to fetch water, felt something should be done. He made up his mind to build an Ashram for Bhagavan and scouring the hillside for a suitable site, he suggested a place downhill from the spring on which to begin. Bhagavan said it was a prodigious task owing to the rugged terrain: “You cannot imagine the state the site was in originally. Kandaswami worked with almost superhuman effort, achieved by his own hands what even four people together could not have done. He removed all the prickly pear, reduced stone and boulder to level ground, created a garden and raised the Ashram. We got four coconut trees for planting. To plant them properly Kandaswami dug huge square pits about ten feet deep. That would give you an idea of the amount of labour he put into the work he took on hand.”[1]
Observing the steep pitch of the hill and the height of the front perimeter container wall of the Ashram, it is easy to see how much leveling and filling-in of excavated rock would have been required. It had been Kandasami who planted and regularly watered both the banyan tree near Alamarattu Guhai as well as all the trees on both sides of the path up to Virupaksha Cave. Considering the deficit of water in those days, even this was no small feat. But to plant at the new rocky site, soil had to be brought in by hand. Once done Kandaswami planted fruit-bearing trees such as mango, jackfruit and coconut and made a flower garden.
By 1915 the Ashram was mostly completed and Kandaswami enjoined Bhagavan to come and live there. The shift from Virupaksha was gradual and took place in the fall of 1915 over a period of months.[2] Palaniswami moved up to the new Ashram but as his health worsened, he asked to move back down to Virupaksha for convalescence. There he remained and was blessed to have daily visits from Bhagavan. Though he grew steadily weaker, he hung on for three years until he died in Bhagavan’s hands in June, 1918.
In the latter stages of the construction, Kandaswami had help from Perumal Swami and workers. Mahadevaswami, head of Kovilur Mutt and former head of the Esanya Mutt, donated money. When faced with objections about supporting enterprises not connected with the mutt, Mahadevaswami said, “We and our mutts are subject to certain restrictions and control. But Bhagavan and his state are supreme and beyond any human control. We should consider it our good fortune to serve such a sage. If [they] don’t approve of my giving money from mutt funds, I will give my personal money.”
After living with Bhagavan for a short time in the new Ashram he had labored so hard to construct, Kandaswami returned to his native place and was not seen again. Bhagavan named the new tree-shaded hermitage in the builder’s honour, calling it by the Sanskritised version of his name, ‘Skandasramam’. Thus, among the many sites Bhagavan inhabited in the years since his advent to Arunachala, this was his first Ashram.
Kandaswami left Tiruvannamalai (‘with no further news’) shortly after the completion of Skandasramam, which had been his labour of love for more than a decade.[3] After his departure, further work was taken up by other resident-devotees. Kandaswami’s original construction consisted of the front verandah, mother’s room and the two rooms adjoining the verandah. The puja room came only toward the latter part of Bhagavan’s stay on the hill when one Vridhachala Gurukkal from Tiruvannamalai made the small room at the rear utilising the large boulder behind the Ashram as its western wall. There he installed an idol of Goddess Yogambika.
Over the years, Skandasramam saw a number of ardent devotees who came to live with Bhagavan on the hill, among them Bhagavan’s mother, Alagammal, as well as Ganapati Muni, Palaniswami, Sivaprakasham Pillai, Ramanatha Brahmachari, Kunjuswami, Aiyaswami, Viswanatha Swami, Mastanswami, among others. The daily routine began at 3am and devotees rose and sat in meditation near Bhagavan. Kunjuswami recounts: “Bhagavan’s mother would get up around 4 a.m. and sing devotional songs. Sri Bhagavan would go out at five and be back an hour later. We would begin to recite Aksharamanamalai and finish by six. Sri Bhagavan would go for his bath and we would also go out and have our bath and be ready to eat with Sri Bhagavan at eight. In the evenings we would sit before Sri Bhagavan at 6.30 p.m. and would again recite Aksharamanamalai. Sri Bhagavan used to close his eyes reclining on the pillow. We would finish the recitation at 7.30 p.m. when we generally had our supper.[4] Once in two or three days, during the parayana, Sri Bhagavan would go into deep meditation. Even at the end of the parayana, he would not open his eyes. We used to call him gently, but Sri Bhagavan would be completely oblivious to his surroundings. To wake him, Perumalswami, Akhandananda, Mastanswami and I would take out conches and blow on them. The sound of the conch used to slowly bring him back to the external world. On such days, we would eat at 9 p.m.”
During the day, Bhagavan would sit outside beneath a large fruit tree. Though fully mature, the tree never bore fruit. When this was brought to Bhagavan’s attention, he remarked, jokingly: “What to do? It is all due to its association with us! It has become like us,” i.e. childless like a sadhu.
One curious resident at Skandasramam was ‘Soldierswami’. He had been Village Officer at Vaniambadi and felt it was his duty to act as Bhagavan’s bodyguard. He would get up in the morning, take his bath, dress as a soldier, salute Bhagavan and stand guard at the entrance to Skandasramam, holding his walking stick as if it were a gun.
During the years at Skandasramam, Bhagavan was in his best state of health and visitors who climbed the hill to meet with him found just reward for their efforts, as the small Ashram in these early days before large crowds convened around Bhagavan provided a quiet, intimate setting in which to drink in the bliss of his presence.
In Later Years
In the aftermath of the death of Bhagavan’s mother in May 1922, Bhagavan shifted down to the huts near her shrine in what would come to be known as Sri Ramanasramam. After that he visited Skandasramam less and less and in time the buildings fell into decline. In 1940, the grandson of Skandasramam’s builder, the late Kandaswami, carried out necessary repairs. But in 1945, a Rajah from the United Provinces visited Skandasramam and, finding it needed extensive renovation, offered to finance a complete restoration. By the third week of September, the repairs were already underway and Bhagavan got the urge to go up and have a look at the work not having seen Skandasramam for many years. Two months later when repairs were nearing completion and the path from Ramanasramam was re-laid, a group trip up the hill was organised with hundreds of devotees.
Bhagavan was covered with a shawl as the weather, though sunny, was quite cool. He sat on a couch placed in front of the verandah where he began to narrate his life on the hill and the years at Skandasramam, indicating various places associated with its history. Nagamma wrote to her brother of this awe-inspiring sight: “Bhagavan seated on the sofa underneath the shade of trees looked grander than an emperor anointed for coronation. With Arunachala as the throne, the thinly clouded sky as the white umbrella, the trees fanning a gentle breeze on either side, the spray of the Hill-stream as the oil, that Emperor of Yogis sat as in coronation durbar while the maiden Nature raised to him the camphor-flame of sunshine. How can I describe this scene, my brother?” (Letters, 26th Nov. 1945)
Skandasramam Today
In 1966 one Ashram inmate, Sri Sai Das, took up the task of white-washing the buildings and repainting the woodwork as well as other general repairs. The renovation work was followed up with a small rededication ceremony performed on 4th June that year.
Skandasramam has since been declared an historical and cultural treasure of India under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958.
Some months back, Ramanasramam began maintenance work on the path up the hill, providing water lines to meet the formidable need for watering hundreds of saplings recently planted by Ashram staff and volunteers from nearby engieering colleges along the path up the hill. Vilvam, pungai, and maghizham trees are ever-green, keeping their leaves even in the heat of summer and thus providing shade for pilgrims ascending the hill to Skandasramam. Additional work includes a stone barricade constructed above Skandasramam to prevent avalanches during torrential rains.
[1] See Day by Day, (9-12-45 Morning). See also the deposition to the commission in 1938, where Bhagavan says that preliminary work on the site began as early as 1902. The bulk of the hard labour was probably done between 1906-1915. (MP Jan 1988, p. 51.)
[2] Devotees report having had Bhagavan’s darshan variously at the new site and at Virupaksha Cave up through October, 1915.
[3] Sivaprakasam Pillai said that Kandaswami left the mountain before living at the newly built ashram. (See Power of the Presence, Part One, p. 41.)
[4] This tradition lives on today in Sri Ramanasramam with Tamil parayana at 6.15pm followed by the evening meal at 7.30pm.
