Tirumala Venkateswara Templeਤਿਰੁਮਲਾ ਵੈਂਕਟੇਸ਼ਵਰ ਮੰਦਰ

Venkateswara Temple at Tirumala, in Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati district, is the great shrine of Tirupati Balaji, drawing around 24 million devotees a year, among the most visited religious sites in the world. The temple stands on Venkatadri, the seventh of the Tirumala hills, on the southern banks of the holy tank Swami Pushkarini.

What is Tirumala Venkateswara Temple?

Tirumala Venkateswara is a Hindu temple to Venkateswara, a form of Vishnu, and, like the great shrines gathered in the mandirs of India, it is one of the most visited religious sites in the world. Tradition holds that the deity appeared on earth to save mankind from the trials of the Kali Yuga, the present age in Hindu reckoning, which is why the shrine is called Kaliyuga Vaikuntha and the deity Kaliyuga Prathyaksha Daivam. He is known by many names, Balaji, Govinda and Srinivasa among them, and the temple is counted among the eight self-manifested Vishnu shrines, including Badrinath, and as the 75th of the 108 Divya Desams praised by the Alvars. The complex is built in the Dravidian idiom of the South, the temple language of towering gopurams and pillared halls, distinct from the Nagara style of the North. Worship follows the Vaikhanasa Agama tradition, and the temple is run by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, an autonomous trust under the Andhra Pradesh government.

How did a hill shrine become a great temple?

The temple was built by a Tondaiman king and, by tradition, construction began as early as 300 CE; it grew over the centuries as every great dynasty of the South claimed it. The first recorded endowment came in 966 CE, when the Pallava queen Samavai gave jewels and land, two parcels of ten and thirteen acres, and ordered their revenue to fund the temple's major festivals. The Pallavas, the Cholas, the Reddis and the Vijayanagara rulers followed, and the temple gained most of its present wealth and size under Vijayanagara: in 1517 Emperor Krishnadevaraya's gifts of gold and jewels enabled the roofing of the inner shrine, the Ananda Nilayam, to be gilded, and on 2 January 1517 he installed his own statue in the temple. In the 11th and 12th centuries the philosopher Ramanujacharya visited three times, settled a dispute over the deity's identity, ordered worship under the Vaikhanasa Agama tradition and founded the Tirupati Jeeyar Mutt in 1119 to institutionalise service to the deity, a role its Jeeyars still hold. The temple is old enough to appear in the Cilappatikaram, one of the five great Tamil epics. Its walls carry 640 inscriptions in Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu, and about 3,000 copper plates preserve the sankirtanas of the poet-saint Annamacharya. After the Vijayanagara decline the temple passed through Golconda, the French and the Nawab of Carnatic, then to the East India Company in the early 19th century; in 1843 administration moved to the Mahants of Hathiramji Muth for six generations, until the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams was formed under the TTD Act of 1933.

What do the seven hills mean?

The Tirumala hills are part of the Seshachalam range, rising about 853 metres above sea level, and by local tradition their seven peaks represent the seven heads of Adisesha, the serpent on whom Vishnu rests. Each hill has its name and story: Vrushabhadri, Anjanadri, Neeladri, Garudadri, Seshadri, Narayanadri and Venkatadri, on which the temple stands. This is why Tirumala is called the Temple of Seven Hills, and why the deity is also Sapthagirisha, Lord of the Seven Hills. On Narayanadri lie Srivari Padalu, footprints held by tradition to be Venkateswara's own from his first step onto the hills. Beside the main temple, on the northern banks of Swami Pushkarini, stands the Bhuvaraha Swamy Temple, dedicated to Varaha, the boar form of Vishnu, and believed to be older than the Venkateswara shrine itself; by tradition devotees seek darshan of Varaha before they approach Venkateswara, and the first naivedyam, the food offering, goes to him.

Why do devotees offer their hair?

One of Tirumala's most distinctive sights is the tonsure hall, where pilgrims have their heads shaved as mokku, an offering to the deity. By one account the daily hair collected exceeds a ton, and the temple sells it internationally, creating a substantial profit. The legend behind it tells of Neela Devi, a Gandharva princess, who cut a lock of her own hair and implanted it on Venkateswara's scalp after a cowherd's blow left a small bald patch; moved by the sacrifice, the deity promised that all his devotees would offer their hair to him, with Neela Devi as its recipient, and Neeladri, one of the seven hills, is named for her. Traditionally the tonsuring barbers were men of the Nayee caste; after a campaign led by Kagganapalli Radha Devi, the temple agreed to appoint women barbers, and she received the Nari Shakti Puraskar from the President of India in 2019. A second legend governs the hundi, the donation pot: Srinivasa, as Venkateswara was known in his earthly life, is said to have borrowed gold from Kubera, the treasurer of the gods, to pay for his wedding to Padmavati. Devotees donate to the hundi so the deity can repay the loan, and collections run as high as 22.5 million rupees a day.

What is the Tirupati laddu?

The laddu is Tirumala's other famous offering, a sweet prasadam that has become a pilgrimage souvenir in its own right. Laddu offerings began at the temple on 2 August 1715, evolving from a loose, chunky sweet called Manoharam; the present spherical form was standardised under the Madras Government in 1940. It is made only in the temple's own Laddu Potu kitchen inside the Sampangi Pradakshinam, by around 620 people including 270 cooks, to a fixed recipe called the dittam: gram flour, cashew nuts, cardamom, ghee, sugar, sugar candy and raisins. The Potu turns out an average of 2.8 lakh laddus a day and can make up to 8 lakh. To stop black-marketing, the TTD registered the laddu for a Geographical Indication tag in 2008 and secured it in 2009, so only laddus made under TTD's supervision at Tirumala may bear the name. The common Proktham laddu weighs 165 to 175 grams and goes to ordinary pilgrims; the festive Asthanam laddu weighs 750 grams and is made only on special occasions.

Which festivals draw the biggest crowds?

More than 433 festivals are observed in the temple's 365 days, suiting its title Nitya Kalyanam Paccha Toranam, where every day is a festival. The greatest is the Srivari Brahmotsavam, nine days in October, when the processional deity Malayappa, with his consorts SriDevi and BhuDevi, is carried through the four streets around the temple on different vahanams, and lakhs gather, especially for the Garuda vahanam. Vaikunta Ekadasi is the most important Vaishnavite festival of the year: on that single day up to 150,000 devotees pass through the Vaikunta Dwaram, the special entrance that encircles the inner sanctum. In February comes Ratha Saptami, with the processional deity taken around the temple on seven vahanams from morning to night. Daily footfall averages above 60,000 and crosses one lakh during the great festivals. The pre-dawn Suprabhatam, 70 verses composed in the 13th century to wake the deity, still opens each day, and the air carries the sankirtanas of Annamacharya, the 14th-century poet-saint who sang tens of thousands of songs in praise of Venkateswara. Alongside Jagannath Puri, Tirumala stands among the most visited Vaishnavite shrines in the world.