Sri Rama Perumal Temple

This is one of the relatively few Divya Desams where the presiding deity is specifically Rama, rather than another form of Vishnu, most of the 108 depict Vishnu in his primordial form or a different avatar entirely. Locally the deity is known as Valvil Raman ("Rama of the great bow"), and unusually for Rama iconography, which is almost always shown as a simple two-armed archer, the moolavar here is four-armed, holding the conch and discus in the upper hands in addition to the bow, a combination found nowhere else among the 108.

Thirumangai Alvar sang ten pasurams in praise of this temple, securing its place in the fixed canon of the Naalayira Divya Prabandham and giving this otherwise modest village shrine a devotional standing that reaches far beyond its size.

Temple tradition holds that as Ravana carried the abducted Sita across the sky in the Pushpaka Vimana, the aged eagle-king Jatayu intercepted him and fought to free her. Grievously wounded in the battle, Jatayu fell to earth at this spot; when Rama arrived searching for Sita, Jatayu lived just long enough to tell him what had happened before dying in his presence. Rama is traditionally believed to have personally performed Jatayu's last rites here (an act of gratitude to a devotee who gave his life trying to protect Sita) and the town's name, Pullabhoothangudi, is popularly read as "the resting place of the bird's soul."

Beyond the legend, temple tradition and later inscriptions place the shrine's construction in the Medieval Chola period, around the 9th century CE, with further additions made by the Pandya kings in the centuries that followed, part of the same wave of temple-building that produced many of the great Chola-era Divya Desams in the surrounding Kumbakonam region.

The temple is compact by Divya Desam standards: a five-tier Rajagopuram fronts a sanctum crowned by the Sobana Vimanam, built in the stepped, pyramidal style characteristic of Tamil vimana design. Subsidiary shrines within the complex are dedicated to Yoga Narasimha and Udyoga Narasimha, and the temple tank, Jatayu Theertham, takes its name directly from the Ramayana episode associated with the site.

Daily worship follows the customary schedule observed at the Kumbakonam-area Divya Desams, with the four-armed Valvil Raman form of the deity receiving both morning and evening pooja.