M15-SRI ANANTHAPADMANABHASWAMY TEMPLE-THE MAIN STORY

 BY    PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU  (VRS.SOMANCHI)

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  We reached Tiruvananthapuram at midnight on 4-8-24 and stayed in the hotel already booked there by us . On  morning of 5-8-24  we got ready at 6am and started for the temple. We were there before the time suggested by the guide( 8am). I could not believe my eyes . We were at that moment in the majestic Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple by the sea side and we were  a full 1300 kilometers  away from our home! The gopuram is decorated with most sublime and most artistic sculptures of gods . I wondered how the sculptors could create such sulime art on the temple towers and the many  pillars and in the mantapams we saw in various temples. It appears a great temple art renaissance took place throughout south India.All the temples renovated reconstructed during last 300-400 years in south India (particularly in the far south) possess most sublime temple art. Even ordinary persons can detect this uniform high art standard.Many internet sites shower high prize on Hampi Vijayanagar kings for high expertise in temple art. Mine are remarks of only a simple viewer who is wonderstruck viewing these art creations. 

Luckily the guide we chose was a very nice patient person .He accompanied us everywhere showing the temples and mantapams one by one and explaining their significance both from historical and religious spiritual angle  .We followed the  dress code fixed for devotees by the Devasthanam.  Men  not to  wear shirt and pant but only  dhothi and an upper cloth . We climbed the  wide stone stairs and reached the beautiful entrance Mantapam the famous  “Ottakkal Mantapam.”It is said that it was constructed using for floor   a huge square stone slab which was ( two metersX two meters )in size  and  two and half  feet thick. The slab   extends  into the sanctum sanctorum  as per construction plan as ordered by the  great and devout king .

 As per tradition, only those persons  who donate all their personal wealth to god almighty are eligible to set foot on that high slab. The great Travancore monarch was such a  great  devotee of Lord Anantha Padmanabha(Lord Vishnu) that he wrote a  deed donating  his entire kingdom to Lord Anantha Padmanabha. He further  mentioned in the deed that all his successors would be bound by that deed and that any  new territories conquered by them would also become donation to the god.The great king also declared in writing that  he and all the succeeding rulers would include the words  “Padmanabha Dasa”  as part of their names.

Adjoining the main temple there are many temple  structures looking like tiled palatial houses. They are  houses of god almighty and  temples in the Kerala style of temple construction.(We saw in the Net  the majestic world famous Guruvayoor temple of Lord Sri Krishna).I thought that the Internal architecture in Kerala  temples would be very different from the architecture of the old Dravidian temples we saw at Srirangam, Madurai, SriVilliputhoor, Rameswaram,Tiruchendur and Shuchindram .But to my surprise ,inside the temple, the architecture of pillars,corridors, mantapams etc was almost same  as in those temples—the same grandeur, utter poetic beauty and unmatched sculptural skill. There are most artistic and sublime sculptures of gods on the grand temple gopuram. We felt blessed seeing the gopuram. The brown tiled  palatial buildings  of the gods make the Kerala temples slightly different.

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The great Anantha Padmanabha temple  is in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram city the capital of Kerala state. It is one of the 108 “Divyadesams”( i.e. important temples to be visited as specified  by the great sage Sri Ramanuja). History and also the Puranas and other religious books indicate that the  temple existed even by  eighth century AD. It is stated that references to the temple exist  in holy scriptures like the Brahmanda Purana, Matsya Purana, Varaha Purana, Skanda Purana, Padma Purana, Vayu Purana and Bhagavatha Purana. The Puranas are the lives of  gods written in ancient times  in Sanskrit by great sages . Scholars have said that  mention of the temple was also  made in the Mahabharata epic. All this indicated that the temple was  very ancient .   

It is said that the  ancient Tamil holy books of Sangam period mentioned about   a temple of Lord Vishnu where the god in his regal awe-inspiring way  reclined on a serpent couch . It is said that Nammalwar, the 9th century Tamil sage had  composed  hymns in praise of Lord Vishnu in the Ananthasayana  posture .

The statue of reclining Lord Vishnu here is 18 feet long and  awe inspiring . The sanctum had  three viewing windows  . We could view  Lord Vishnu in the company of all  great gods. It was a most wonderful view.Lord Vishnu the administrator of universe of billion galaxies wears   a golden crown and his mighty  hands and holy feet  are  also covered in  gold. Lord vishnu’s consorts   Goddess Laxmi (goddess of wealth and daughter of the  god of seas) and  Goddess Bhudevi (goddess Earth) sit beside  him.  Lord Brahma the creator seated on a lotus  is also there  as if to hear Lord Vishnu’s advice .

The first  door is to view the holy visage of the Emperor. The second is  to see goddess Laxmi and  Lord Brahma in converse . The last is to view goddess Bhudevi and the  holy feet of the Lord of the universe.There are images of  great sages of heaven  and other gods in the sanctum sanctorum.

My description of the holy sanctum  may not be entirely complete. This is because  we moved inside temple in a fast way  among the jostling crowd of Bhakthas.Mine is only a simple travelogue and simple description and not a very detailed essay. However we saw almost all the temples, thanks to the expert professional way  the guide helped us.

Inside the vast temple complex  there are two other important shrines,for the gods Lord Ugra Narasimha swamy and Lord Krishna Swami. Lord Narasimha is the angry and ferocious half human and half lion form of Lord Vishnu (in one of his earthly incarnations) burning with anger at the great and continuing evil on planet earth. The Lord Krishna  shrine enjoys an independent status.There are also many shrines— for Lord Rama ,Lord Viswaksena(equivalent to Lord Ganesha in SriVishnava tradition), Vyasa, Ashwatthama(the “Chiranjeevis” deathless sages now living  immersed in meditation in Himalayas) , Lord Sasta,Garuda and Lord Hanuman

The temple has a corridor with “365 and one-quarter” sculptured granite-stone pillars with elaborate carvings.It is described y visitors as an architectural wonder .The corridor starts on the eastern side and continues upto the sanctum sanctorum. There is a 80-foot Dhwaja Stambham (god’s majestic flagpost in the shape of a  high cylindrical pillar   covered with gold plated metal sheet with imaes of gods).

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THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL CONCEPT OF LORD ANANTHA SAYANA

Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva are the three forms of god almighty of the universe in Hindu mythology. Lord Brahma is the Creator  who also puts the divine soul in every living creature. Lord Vishnu rules the universe for billions of years till it reaches a crumbling state losing all its internal energy(the E=mc2 energy!) . Lord Shiva destroys the crumbling universe with one stroke silently so that Lord Brahma can create a new universe full of new energy to last again for billions of years.

The concept of Lord Vishnu taking rest reclining in his high heaven on the snake bed caught the imagination of Hindus since ancient times. This is a view of Lord Vishnu resting in the golden palaces in the world of oceans . Goddess Laxmi his consort is daughter of the great god of oceans, This view of Lord Vishnu as Lord Anantha Padnabha Swamy greatly pleased hundreds of millions of Hindus through the centuries.

 

 Thiruvananthapuram is a sea coast town near the southern tip of  India with a pleasant climate—(speaking from the viewpoint of people of a hot land like peninsular India). It has pleasant surrounding  with millions of coconut trees all around. There are no seperate  cold and hot seasons due to the effect of the sea. It may rain at any hour . The pleasant climate and the rare seaside location  too attracted devotees since times immemorial when the temple of Lord Vishnu as Lord Ananthasayana came up in that city.

Since 2000 years  traditional Hindus  were  mesmerized by   moral stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. The story of Lord Vishnu— the Lord of universe reclining  on a magical bed created by Adi Shesha the God of Snake world in a sea of milk—attracted both the philosophers and simple devotees .

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 As per   legend there lived in ancient times in the forest, in the vicinity of the present Anantha Padmanabha  temple  in Thiruvananthapuram,  a  philosopher-hermit  who meditated upon Lord Vishnu for years. The great god pleased with the hermit’s meditation appeared in dreams as a divine looking radiant  little boy as beautiful as Lord Vishnu. The divine looking boy  told of a place in the forest where the hermit can find him. The hermit followed the directions and saw the divine boy moving all alone with a smiling visage. The hermit was overjoyed seeing the little radiant child and asked the child  to stay in his hermitage. The boy smilingly agreed but put a condition that he should never  be ill treated or scolded.The hermit readily and joyfully areed.

 But one day the hermit observed that the boy started playing with the Vishnu idol which he every day worshipped with great reverence. The boy  was damaging it . The idol was dearer to the sage than his life. The sage could not control his anger,scolded the boy and asked him to go away. The boy simply vanished . The sage realized that the sweet little boy was none other than Lord Vishnu himself.

He  repented and prayed to Lord Vishnu to pardon him. He wept uncontrollably and  stopped taking food and searched for days near and far without rest. He again started penance. The divine boy again appeared in the sage’s  dream and directed the hermit to search in the area of nearby lake  .As per directions of a forest woman he searched and  discovered the radiant little boy there.

But a most wonderful thing happened now .The boy  disappeared into a huge tree and after  a few moments a huge  wooden statue of Lord Vishnu  reclining on the coils of ferocious serpent appeared. But the form which appeared  before his eyes  was colossal and  a few  kilometers long !  After the sage prayed the form shrank to  a few meters length—to the size of the present stone statue. The  sage  was overjoyed and showed his gratitude to god by placing before god’s statue a “naivedyam” (a food item respectfully put before god) . It was a a piece of salted mango put in  a coconut shell placed before god in great reverence and gratitude. Such simple “Naivedyam” of a piece of salted mango is still continued in Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple even to this day.

Soon the king who ruled at that time got a  temple  built there . It was a far smaller temple than the present temple. Soon as time passed by people in hundreds and thousands began to visit the most beautiful sea side temple containing Lord Vishnu’s idol in wood.

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(a) Let us come to relatively modern times –a time  1000 or 1500 years from today.The great philosophers Sri Adi Shankara and Sri  Ramanuja  studied the entire spectrum of social problems in Indian society. Their philosophical doctrines   greatly helped in simplifying Hinduism and removing old cobwebs and giving Hindu youngsters  an aim for both intellectual activity and social service.

(b)They made Hinduism  as a system oriented towards social service and and social awakening basing on purely spiritual and philosophic awakening. They made Hinduism a modern religion .

( c ) While stressing the extreme holiness of human soul and its absolute equivalence to god amighty ,they suggested that the primary aim of life is to be  good, ethical and service–minded. They proclaimed perfect equality of human beings .Lord Buddha around 600 BC, feeling greatly  vexed with human selfishness, declared that existence of a  soul is untrue. However the  Ramayana-Mahabharata philosophy created in common folk a firm belief in a holy soul .

( d )  Sage Adi shankara born in Kerala around  800 AD (i.e. more than a thousand years after Lord Buddha)   declared  that the soul is god  almighty himself living in us. He patiently toured entire India and unified all the hundreds of Hindu sects each having its own philosophy but forgetting the central sublime philosophy of Hinduism in the Veda—about existence of most holy soul in everybody and its equivalence to od almighty.  He awakened youngsters and advised and see the povert and suffering  and find ways to serve them.He however  took a  scientific view saying that god is formless though extremely kind  (e)Sage Ramanuja born 200-300 years later agreed about the soul being god almighty residing in us . But he declared that god is not formless but is somewhat like a most beautiful warrior-prince (Lord Vishnu)ruling the universe and is most kind. He is said to have introduced strict procedures to be followed in temple and to observe festivals to remember god. He also took initiative to open the temples to people of socially very backward communities and took religious minded people from backward groups among his chief shishyas.

(f)Sage Maddhwa of 13th centuryAD differed from both the sages Sri Adi Shankara and Sri Rramanuja. He declared that man is by nature ill-natured and his soul  can never be compared to mighty and sublime god’s soul . He said that man can,only by doing good deeds, can  move a little nearer to god. He also felt that  worshipping a child form of god almighty Bala Krishna is the best way of worshipping god almighty because man’s brain is immature like a child’s brain. He devoted his entire life to worshipping Child Krishna and built great temples and mutts in Udupi, Karnataka in the name of  Child Krishna.