400 year old world famous granary in the Hindu temple!!

 Huge granary,capcity:3000 kalams / measures.Sri Pallaivana Nathar Temple, tamilnadu-favtourism.blogspot.com

Sri Palaivana NatharTemple -12 th century AD,  hiramprakash.wordpress.com

The temple city of Kumbakonam, famous for the Mahamaham tank, has a vast number of historical temples in and around the city. Pallaivana Nathar Temple located in Papanasam, 15 km from Kumbakonam and 25 km from Thanjavur city, is an old temple
of historical value. It was  built during the reign of the Chola Kingdom and  is spread over an area of 3 acres. It is not a big temple as many near-by temples are. Here, the presiding deity is Lord Shiva and his  consort is Karu Katha Nayaki or Garpa Rakshaka Aambica.   

Here, Lord Shiva is also known as  Mullaivana  Nathar and the 
glory of this  seventh century temple  was sung in devotional hymns by great Shavite  saints  Tignanasambandar  and Tirunavukkarasar - Appar.

400 year old granary - Sri Palaivana NatharTemple,  hiramprakash.wordpress.com

An interesting feature of this temple is the presence of  400 year old  world famous granary (for storing  paddy) on the northern side of the Raja Gopuram at the Eastern entrance. It is rare to see huge granaries on the Hindu temple premises. This is a  huge granary made of brick and lime mortar, circular at bottom and conical at top with three different entrances -  one on the Western side at the bottom and one each in the middle and the top on the Southern side. It was built by the third  Nayak  ruler of Thanjavur  Raghunatha Nayak (1600 to 1634 ). Raghunatha Nayak was a devout Hindu and had built several temples in  this region. The total capacity  of this famous granary is roughly 3000 kalam or measure. Dimension of this circular structure is : breadth at the center maximum 86 feet or 26 m  by height  36 feet or 11m.

Granary - 400 year old built by Raunatha Nayak of Thanjavur Nayak Dynasty. Sri Palaivana NatharTemple, Temple, www.flickr.com

 Granaries  are found in  some temples of Tamil Nadu, mention may be made of  the world famous Sri Ranganathar temple (8th century) at Srirangam. The ancient rulers of not only Tamil Nadu but also other regions built  huge structures to store paddy, wheat, etc. That the rulers gave due importance to  a systematic food security planning, not only  covering the temple but also the local  population of the temple town, is borne out by  such huge granaries. A safe  food storage system will be of great help in case of unexpected drought, flooding, storms, crop failure, pest attack and other natural disasters.

Granaries were built in villages and small towns in the by-gone days by the local rulers to store vast quantity of grains. This was to safeguard the grains from  from rodent attack, rain, etc., and  to meet future requirements of the local population, etc in case of some kind of emergency.   

As mentioned above, not many temples of Tamil Nadu  have huge granaries within the temple complex. The exceptions are  srirangam temple, Thiruvanaikovil  Jambukeswarar  Akilandeswari Temple & at Thirupalaithurai (Mullai Nathar temple) near Kumbakonam and  the Adi Rangam Temple near Jambai in Thiruvannamalai district. They  were built  mainly to store grains donated by devotees and paddy collected  collected from  vast temple lands after harvest.

 Ref:
 http://tamilnadu-favtourism.blogspot.in/2016/03/palaivananathar-temple-papanasam.html