Madurai

Madurai is an ancient city on the Vaigai River in Tamil Nadu, south India. By the seventh century it was the main capital of the Pandya kings, and Tamil tradition holds that the third Sangam, an assembly of poets, met there. The great temple of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar, whose present structure largely dates from the seventeenth century, stands at its centre. The Nayak dynasty ruled from Madurai from 1559 to 1736, and in 1801 it passed under British East India Company control. The mathematician Augustus De Morgan was born there in 1806, and in 1896 the young Ramana Maharshi, living there with his uncle, had the experience of self-inquiry that shaped his teaching before he left for Arunachala.