01The vratam on the hill
The Satyanarayana katha of the Skanda Purana is read in Hindu homes across India on full moons, weddings and housewarmings. Annavaram is its own temple. Couples come by the thousands, sometimes in batches of hundreds at once in long halls, to perform the vratam with the temple’s priests and take the prasadam of wheat, ghee and jaggery home. Newly married couples in the Godavari districts make it their first pilgrimage. Anna-varam means what you ask is granted.
02Found on Ratnagiri
The temple’s account says that in 1891 the deity appeared in a dream to the landlord Raja I. V. Ramanarayanam and to a local devotee, and the murti was found on the hill and installed on Shravana Shuddha Vidiya of that year. The sanctum holds a single tall murti with Vishnu in the middle, Shiva above and Brahma below, a three-in-one form. The present temple, with its wheels and horses carved round the base, was built later in the 20th century.
The life of this place
- 1891The murti is found and installed on Ratnagiri hill.
Annavaram has its own railway station on the Visakhapatnam–Vijayawada line; a ghat road and steps lead up the hill.
