TN government seeks GI tag for Palani panchamirtham'

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government approached the Geographical Indication Registry, Chennai, on Wednesday seeking Geographical Indication (GI) status for ‘panchamirtham’ offered in Sri Dhandayuthapani Swamy temple, Palani.

In a petition filed before GI Registry, Joint commissioner/Executive officer, HR & CE, Arulmigu Dhandayuthapani Swamy Thirukkoil, Palani, submitted that ‘panchamirtham’, was being prepared and offered only in the hill temple Palani for centuries.

It is a combination of five natural substances, - banana, jaggery sugar, cow ghee, honey and cardamom. For additional flavour, dates and diamond sugar candies are added to the five substances. The preparation was without adding any preservative or artificial ingredient.

Panchamirtham, was well known for its religious fervour across the world,  besides being a good choice of desert as and when  possible. It is well known even outside the geographic limits.  It is consumed by people of various countries as the temple attracts a large number of devotees from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Singapore and other countries.

‘Panchamirtham was being offered to devotees who offer worship in the hill temple. It is also sold at stalls run by temple administration in the foothills. It cannot be obtained anywhere except in the premises of the temple and stalls of the temple administration. The petitioner said the ‘moolavar idol’ was said to have been designed, installed and worshiped by Bogar Siddhar, who made it with a combination of nine kinds of substances. The establishment of temple dates to the period of Chera King Cheraman Peruman during 9th century AD.

People living in Kurinji land offered natural products such as banana, honey,
milk and milk products and cardamom  to the God in gratitude. During the course of time they began to make some combination of natural products in some definite proportion. The combination of five natural products through natural method is known as panchamirtham.

Several references were found in Tamil literary works regarding the habitation and Lord Muruga. Hence, the origin of Geographical Indication dates backto ancient period. Initially, panchamirtham was prepared atop the hill manually. Now, the temple administration prepares it on a large scale in a hygienic manner. The whole process of preparation has been automated. It is prepared under the guidance of Central Government’s CFTRI (Central Food Technological Research Institute) Mysore.

Raw materials used for the preparation were subjected to CFTRI Quality Test and is prepared only under the guidance of CFTRI. Panchamirtham worth '31.74 crore was sold between July 2014 and  June 2015.