இசைத் தூண்கள் · Musical Pillars, Nellaiappar← Udal Koyil
இசைத் தூண்
The colonette being struckTen colonettes and a pier, one block of stoneBending mode, drawn in the physics lensTen colonettes rise from one base block to one capital, carved with the pier as a single piece. The hammer on the carriage swings in and taps the one you pick; it bows and rings (the bow is exaggerated and slowed here). Sizes are illustrative, tuned to a scale with Sa at G3; the dial reads the pitch the horn hears. Switch to The physics to see each note worked out from the colonette's thickness and free length.
What the legend says. In the Nellaiappar temple at Tirunelveli, slender stone colonettes are carved in clusters around main pillars, each cluster from a single block of stone. Tap one and it rings; tap its neighbour and the note changes, so each pillar is said to hold a swara. The pillars are traditionally attributed to the Pandya period, around the 7th century CE. Similar musical pillars stand at the Meenakshi temple in Madurai and at Suchindram, and, outside Tamil Nadu, at the Vittala temple in Hampi. Today they are often shared as stone that sings for reasons no one understands.

Legend: temple descriptions of the Nellaiappar temple, Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu HR&CE); the Pandya date is a traditional attribution. Physics: Euler–Bernoulli beam theory for a beam clamped at both ends (first two modes βL ≈ 4.730 and 7.853); granite E roughly 10–70 GPa and ρ about 2,600–2,800 kg/m³ from standard material tables. Colonette sizes and notes in the model are illustrative, not measured at the temple.