Sri Purushottama Perumal Temple

Uthamarkoil (also known locally as Bhikshandar Kovil) is structurally unlike almost any other Divya Desam: it houses separate shrines for all three deities of the Hindu Trimurti (Vishnu as Purushottama Perumal, Shiva as Bhikshadanar, and Brahma) each with their own consort, Lakshmi as Poornavalli, Parvati and Saraswati respectively, under one temple roof. Most Divya Desams are exclusively Vishnu shrines with the Shaiva and Brahma associations, if any, kept to legend; here all three traditions are given physical, ongoing worship side by side.

As a Divya Desam, the temple is glorified by Thirumangai Alvar, whose hymns here are among the more substantial devoted to a single Chola Nadu shrine, and temple tradition also connects the site to his broader work of gathering resources for the great walls of the Srirangam Ranganathaswamy Temple, tying this comparatively small temple back to the region's most important one.

Temple tradition offers two overlapping legends for this site. One holds that Janaka, the king of Mithila and father of Sita in the Ramayana, built the original shrine here. The other, more specific to the temple's Trimurti character, holds that Purushottama Perumal appeared here to relieve Shiva of a sin he incurred while severing one of Brahma's five heads, a version of the Kapala Mochana (skull-liberation) theme that recurs at several Divya Desams in this region, including nearby Kandiyur.

Separate from legend, the temple is generally dated to the late 8th century CE, built under the Medieval Cholas, with later contributions recorded from the Vijayanagara empire and the Madurai Nayaks, placing its construction in the same broad wave of Chola-era temple building as many of its Trichy-area neighbours.

The temple's defining architectural feature is its arrangement of three separate sanctums for Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma within a single temple complex, each with its own consort shrine, a configuration rare enough in Tamil Nadu that Uthamarkoil is frequently singled out in temple surveys as one of only a few such combined Trimurti sites still in active worship.

Daily worship follows the customary schedule of the Chola Nadu Divya Desams, with separate rituals conducted for each of the temple's three principal shrines.