To help the pilgrims walking incredible distances, philanthropists used to construct rest houses at intervals along the way. The last of them before Rameswaram was Thangachimadam, a few kilometres away on the island. Modern means of transport have made these resthouses superfluous. But in their time they were most useful, even vital. The Sethupathis of Ramanathapuram, of which district Rameswaram is an administrative part were called the guardians of the Sethu", the bridge which, according to tradition, was built for Sri Rama to cross over into Sri Lanka when He set out to recover Sita. The Rameswaram pilgrimage has long been a tradition in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, and has passed into folklore. Many kings of old period themselves on having planted columns of victory in Rameswaram. Krishna III the Rashtrakuta, in the tenth century, the Hoysala, Vishnuvardhana, in the twelfth. It was a king of Sri Lanka who according to inscriptions, built the sanctum of the temple. The temple, which has over the centuries grown into its present gigantic dimensions, stands on the eastern shore of an island, which is shaped like a conch, which Lord Vishnu bears in one of His bands. No field is ploughed or oil pressed anywhere in the island. A magnificent railway bridge, over a kilometre long and constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century, connected it with the mainland. The temple 264m east to west and 200m north to south, and with three prakaras, two big gopuras and two more unfinished ones, faces east, a few metres from the sea. It contains two Lingas under worship. These are innumerable other shrines and twenty-two "tirthas", or sacred bathing places.