Sri Vaikuntanatha Perumal Temple

Nammalvar sang mangalasasanam here, and this temple holds a place next only to Alwarthirunagari itself in importance among the nine Nava Tirupathi shrines strung along the Tamiraparani river. Temple tradition holds that a demon named Somuka stole the Vedas from Brahma and hid on the banks of the Tamiraparani; Vishnu came directly from Vaikuntam, his own celestial abode, to slay the demon and restore the Vedas to Brahma, and it is this direct arrival from Vaikuntam, rather than an avatar taken on earth, that gives the deity his name Vaikuntanathar and the town its name, Srivaikuntam. (Some later retellings frame the episode as the Matsya, or fish, avatar; this page follows the temple's own more commonly cited Vaikuntanathar legend of the Lord's direct descent.)

The temple's significance is compounded by a wider textual claim: the Brahmanda Purana, one of Hinduism's eighteen major Puranas, is said to contain a chapter titled Navathirupathi Mahatmyam describing the glory of these nine river-bank shrines, with Srivaikuntam named at its opening, a rare instance of a Puranic reference reinforcing what the Alvars themselves sang centuries later.

As one of the nine Nava Tirupathi temples on the Tamiraparani, Srivaikuntam has long served as something like the group's senior shrine, drawing the largest crowds of the nine and anchoring the wider pilgrimage circuit that links it to Alwarthirunagari, Srivaikuntam's neighbouring river-bank temples, and the Nammalvar tradition that binds them together.

Vaikunta Ekadasi, observed in the Tamil month of Margazhi (December–January), is by far the temple's most important festival and among the most significant Vaikunta Ekadasi observances anywhere in the Nava Tirupathi circuit: the temple's Paramapada Vasal (literally the "gateway to the eternal abode," also called the Sorgavasal or Vasal of Heaven) is opened to devotees only on this single day of the year. Passing through this gateway is believed to carry the same merit as attaining Vaikuntam itself, and the festival draws large numbers of pilgrims from across the Nava Tirupathi region specifically for this once-a-year passage.