Sri Venkateswara Temple, Tirumala

01The Lord of the seven hills

The Venkatachala Mahatmya, gathered from the Varaha and Bhavishyottara Puranas, tells how Shri Vishnu came to these hills after Mata Lakshmi left Vaikuntha, and how he married Padmavati, daughter of the king Akasha Raja. To pay for the wedding he took a loan from Kubera, and pilgrims say the offerings in the hundi are helping him repay it to this day. The seven hills are counted as the hoods of Adishesha. Pilgrims shave their heads at the Kalyanakatta as an offering, and many still climb the 3,550 steps of the Alipiri path barefoot.

02Queens, kings and a singer

The walls carry more than a thousand inscriptions. In 966 CE a Pallava queen, Samavai, gave the silver murti now worshipped as Bhoga Srinivasa, with land to keep its lamps lit. Ramanujacharya set the order of worship that the priests still follow. Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara came at least seven times between 1513 and 1521, and copper statues of the king and his two queens, Tirumala Devi and Chinna Devi, still stand with folded hands near the entrance. Annamacharya, the Tallapaka poet, sang thousands of kirtanas to Venkateswara in the 15th century; his descendants had them cut on copper plates, which were found in a sealed room of the temple in the 20th century.

03Who runs the hill

Through the troubled 17th and 18th centuries the temple passed under Golconda, the Nawabs of Arcot and then the East India Company, which took a share of the offerings. In 1843 the Company handed the management to the mahants of the Hathiramji Matha, who held it for ninety years. A Madras law of 1932 created the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which took charge in 1933 and today runs the shrine, the free annadanam that feeds lakhs a day, schools, hospitals and the Sri Venkateswara Vedic University.

The life of this place