"It is said the town was originally known as Tirusirappally, named after the three-headed asura Tirusiras who got a blessing from Lord Shiva after worshiping him here. Trichy has three major attractions. One is the Rock Fort temple in the heart of the old city.... The legend of this deity, as explained in the Sri Ranga Mahatmya, is that when Brahma was in a state of deep meditation, Lord Vishnu, being pleased with him, gave him a deity of Himself, known as Ranga Vimana, a form of Vishnu reclining on Adisesha. As time went on, Brahma later gave the deity to Viraja, who later gave it to Manu, who passed it along to his son Ikshvaku, and finally to Lord Rama. Lord Rama, in gratitude to Vibhishan, the brother of the demon king Ravana of the Ramayana epic, gave him the deity. Vibhishan was returning to Sri Lanka from Ayodhya with the Vishnu deity that had been presented to him by Lord Rama. However, he had been told that if he should set the deity down on the ground, he would not be able to move it again. The gods were not pleased that the deity would be taken away from India and devised a plan to keep the deity in Bharat. Thus, when Vibhashan stopped at Sri Rangam to take bath and perform his worship on the banks of the Kaveri River, he gave the deity to a brahmana boy with instructions not to place it on the ground. But the boy, who was Lord Ganesh in disguise, placed it on the earth anyway. Then the deity became firmly fixed to the ground and could not be moved from the spot where it remains to this day. Vibhishan became angry and chased the boy who ran to the summit of the hill that is the Rock Fort today. There Vibhishan caught and struck the boy, who then revealed his real form and stood transformed as Vinayaka. Even though Vibhishan begged to apologize before going on to Sri Lanka, the image of Vinayaka still has a depression on his face where he had been struck. The area where the deity was set down gradually became covered by a thick forest. The deity was only discovered thousands of years later by a Chola king who accidently found it while chasing a parrot. It was the king who established the Sri Rangam temple, which is presently one of the largest temples in India."