Lakshmi as the badri tree at Badrinath

Badrinath is named for a tree. The tradition says Vishnu sat in long meditation in the cold of the upper Alaknanda, and Lakshmi, unwilling to leave him uncovered, became a jujube — a badri — and spread her branches over him; the spot became the badri hermitage. The Vishnu Purana adds that the sages Nara and Narayana, the pair later read as Arjuna and Krishna, chose the site for their penance. The image in the temple is a foot-high black stone Badrinarayan held to have appeared of itself; tradition says Adi Shankara, in the eighth or ninth century, lifted it out of the Tapt Kund hot spring below the temple and set the shrine in order. The recorded history of the temple grows clear only from the sixteenth century, and the present building follows the earthquake of 1803.