The mobile god, between mountain and plains

In contrast to the moving/fluid goddess Gangamma, who I suggest is stabilized in Tirupati by the mountain and its god, the presumably stable god himself also moves, outside of his temple complex and up and down between the mountain on which he lives and the plains below.

Venkatesvara is said to walk downhill every night to visit his wife Alamelumanga. She lives independently of her husband, in a temple downhill in Tiruchanur, four kilometers outside of Tirupati—a living situation that is an extremely rare, if not unique, phenomenon for consort-goddess temples[8]. (Of course, as is typical of Hindu traditions, imaginatively she is multiple: she simultaneously resides downhill and on her husband’s stone chest of his temple form, for example; so what I am talking about here is specifically her independent temple.) I heard several different explanations for this separate living arrangement[9], including Alamelumanga’s jealousy over the god letting Lakshmi (a goddess both distinct from and identified with Alamelumanga) reside along with her on his chest. Another story tells of Alamelumanga’s jealousy over Venkatesvara’s relationship with a Muslim concubine named Bibi Nanchari (said to be a reincarnation of Bhu Devi), and this is why, it is said, she refuses to live uphill with her husband. Still another oral tradition recounts Venkatesvara’s impatience with his wife after their wedding, when she kept forgetting one thing or another as he waited for her to walk with him to his residence on top of the mountain. In exasperation, he told her that he was going to spit on the ground and that she should return before the spit dried up. Insulted by this ultimatum, Alamelumanga told her husband that she was going to stay downhill, and that if he wanted to meet her, he would have to come to her[10].

Feet of the God

Whatever the reason for separate residences, it is said that it incumbent on Venkatesvara to come down to visit his wife every night, rather than her going uphill; and all the walking up and down wears out his sandals, which have to be replaced daily. At the bottom of the footpath going uphill is a temple whose main image is the feet of the god. Pilgrims here place a pair of brass sandals on their heads as they circumambulate the god’s feet, showing humility towards the god as well as embodying a reminder of the distance covered nightly by the god, as he visits his wife.

The god also has other relatives who live on the plains. Most important of these is his brother Govinda Raja Swamy, whose temple gopuram dominates the skyline of the town below. The story is told that when Venkatesvara wanted to get married, he needed to borrow money for his wedding from his brother Govinda Raja Swamy. He is still paying interest on that loan even today, and pilgrims’ gifts placed in the temple huṇḍī (cash box) are said to be applied towards interest on that loan[11]. Huṇḍī cash contents are conspicuously counted in public at the end of every day, visible to pilgrims on their way out of the temple complex after having taken darśan of the indebted god. On his part, Govinda Raja Swamy downhill is a reclining image that rests its head on a vessel he has used to measure the cash interest he’s been paid by Venkatesvara; he’s tired out from expending so much energy on this task. In contrast to his moving brother, Govinda Raja Swamy seems rather sedentary and doesn’t leave his temple.

Venkatesvara’s mother, Vakulamatha, also lives downhill (and then again up), atop a small hill facing Tirupati in Perurbanda village, 15 kilometers from Tirupati. When a devotee proposed in 2007 to fund renovation of what had become a rather dilapidated temple—and illegal quarrying was posing a threat to Vakulamata Devi Temple–the Devasthanam responsible for Tirumala (TTD) decided to build the temple closer to Tirumala, with the intention to help support building temples for Vakulamata at all sites where there is a Venkatesvara temple. Significantly, their proposal was not to build the Tirupati Vakulamatha temple uphill, but at the base of the hill, at Alipiri, where the footpath up the mountain begins. However, this proposed juxtaposition of mother to son raised problems. Tirumala priests and BJP leaders opposed this site “on the grounds that it would go against the Hindu dharma to place the mother at the feet of her son and the idea was dropped.”[12] Several Tirupati residents told me that “in the old days,” pilgrims used to (and still should) visit all Venkatesvara’s family members downhill (wife, brother, sister, and mother), even though their primary purpose is to take darśan of the God of the Seven Hills—an injunction that is being lost on many contemporary pilgrims who are rushing up and downhill under the pressures of modern-day schedules.

Gangamma in one of her jātara forms,
a coconut head (center), and Venkatesvara
in a Gangamma devotee household shrine

Locally, Venkatesvara is known to be a brother of the grāmadevata Gangamma, and he sends bride’s gifts of a sari and pasupu-kumkuma (turmeric-vermilion) to his sister downhill on the first day of her annual festival (jātara)—delivered downhill atop an elephant (protected by a large parasol) to her Tattayagunta temple. While the god himself does not attend the jātara, his gifting is another means of enacting the important links between uphill and down. The association is also performed on the domestic pūjā shelves–where both Venkatesvara and Gangamma have been installed and are worshiped daily–of the families who are key ritual actors in Gangamma’s jātara. One of these families, the Kaikalas, has the mirāsi (rights and responsibilities) to both take the perambulating veṣams (forms) of Gangamma during her jātara and to unlock the temple of Venkatesvara’s brother, Govinda Raja Swamy, every morning. The Kaikalas perform their mirāsi tasks for both Gangamma and Venkatesvara’s brother as integrated ritual systems.

Dicing scene on hillside outside
Hathi Ramji Matham uphill

We return now to other circumstances under which the god moves–when he leaves his temple to visit or give darśan to his devotees. We have two starkly contrasting examples.The first is the story of the god visiting his devotee Hathi Ramji, a north Indian devotee who built a maṭham facing the Tirumala temple. Because of Hathi Ramji’s great devotion, Venkatesvara is said to have visited the former’s maṭham to play dice with him every evening. This story is part of the dominant mythology of the temple, and an image of the two playing dice is engraved on the silver door to the garbhagṛham (inner shrine room) of Venkatesvara’s Tirumala temple. A larger-than-life-size plaster image of the two dicing friends has been built on the hillside of the maṭham that faces the temple’s outer courtyard, visible to all pilgrims standing in darśan lines (the pushing and shoving at the doorway to the garbhagṛham is such that they may well miss the image on the silver door of the garbhagṛham).

Image of prostrating devotee

A second example of the god willingly leaving his temple for the sake of his devotees is less talked about, for reasons that will become clear. In this case, the god is said to walk downhill to the base of the mountain, which, in earlier days, was the closest one of his untouchable devotees was allowed to come. (Some say this is the cobbler who daily made a new pair of sandals for the god.) Since the devotee was not allowed uphill, god himself walked down daily to give him his darśan. A poignant image has been created in cement at the base of the footpath (the image is likely much newer than the narrative)—the male devotee lying prostrate towards the mountain, covered in turmeric and vermillion. Smaller images to his right are identified as his wife and children. Many pilgrims prostrate next to this figure before they begin their journey up the footpath; those whom I asked did not know the story or identity of the prostrate figure, but thought that the image was a sign of humility that they should emulate.

A prostrating devotee

The mobile god Venkatesvara and his independently residing wife Alamelumanga provide us with traces of the cultural ethos of the rising 15th century cash economy of the region and the left-hand caste Vijayanagara kings who began the transformation of Venkatesvara’s temple into the center of ritual and economic power that it has become today[13]. Left-hand caste communities are associated with cash and mobility: traders, herders, artisans, and leather workers. Women of these castes have traditionally had more mobility and independence than women of the right-hand castes associated with the land, who are (ideally) protected by males and their mobility restricted, like the land itself[14][15][16]. Another trace of the left-hand-caste associations with the Tirumala temple is also indicated in the practice of first morning darśan of the god being given to representatives of a Golla (left-hand, herding-caste) family.