Devalok
Local story · 2 tellings · Pan-India, South India

The Rama found in an anthill

A tribal woman finds Rama's images in an anthill on the Godavari; a tax official builds the temple with state money and is jailed for it.

Who is in it

Places: Bhadrachalam, Srisailam

The story, beat by beat

  1. Dhammakka, a tribal woman of Bhadragiri, dreams that Rama's images lie hidden nearby.
  2. She finds figures of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana inside an anthill, washes them with Godavari water and worships them under a thatch.
  3. Rama tells her that a devotee will one day build him a temple.
  4. Kancharla Gopanna, a revenue officer, raises the temple in 1674 using the state's tax money.
  5. The Golconda ruler jails him; from prison he composes songs to Rama and becomes Bhadrachala Ramadasu.
  6. Tradition says Rama himself paid the debt and freed him.

discovery devotion tribal imprisonment

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Temple tradition

Bhadrachalam local tradition

South India · Bhadrachalam, Telangana Vaishnava Telugu; local Koya tribal memory

On the Godavari at Bhadrachalam the god did not arrive by royal foundation but by a tribal woman's dream. Pokala Dhammakka, of the hill people, was told in her sleep that Rama lay hidden close by; she found the images of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana in an anthill, cleaned them with river water and kept a small shrine. The god, in the telling, promised her a proper temple from a future devotee. That devotee was Kancharla Gopanna, the local tax collector under Golconda, who built the temple in 1674 with revenue he had no right to spend. He was imprisoned for years, and the Telugu songs he wrote to Rama in his cell are why he is remembered as Bhadrachala Ramadasu. Tradition adds that Rama and Lakshmana appeared to the sultan and paid the debt in gold to free him.

Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam — Wikipedia; Bhadrachala Ramadasu — Wikipedia; Bhadrachalam and Ramadasu

Primary text (translation)

Valmiki Ramayana

Pan-India Vaishnava

Valmiki takes Rama through the Dandaka forest and along the Godavari but records no stop at Bhadragiri and no images left behind.

What is different here:

The epic has no Bhadrachalam; the Telugu telling adds a locally discovered god whose first priest is a tribal woman and whose temple-builder is a jailed official.

The Ramayana of Valmiki (verse); Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam — Wikipedia

Sources: Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam — Wikipedia; Bhadrachala Ramadasu — Wikipedia; Bhadrachalam and Ramadasu; The Ramayana of Valmiki (verse)

More stories with the same people

Legend

Ravana's boon at Gokarna

Ravana and his brothers Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana perform austerities at Gokarna for ten thousand years.
How a tradition frames it

Kamban's Rama stands above the three

In the Tamil Ramavataram Rama is divine from the start, yet the poem sets him above Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva rather than inside the triad as an avatar.
Origin

The fish that warned the Bhils

A fish warns a brother and sister of a flood; afterwards Bhagwan, or in one telling Rama, sends them to repeople the world.
From the epics

Rama in Thailand and Cambodia

Thailand's Ramakien makes Phra Ram an incarnation of Phra Narai and a Bodhisatta; Cambodia's Reamker reads Preah Ream almost as a mortal through a Theravada lens.
How a tradition frames it

Rama the monk and Krishna the cousin

Jain tellings keep Rama and Krishna as great men in a fixed roster of sixty-three: Lakshmana kills Ravana, Rama becomes a monk, and Krishna is Neminatha's cousin.
Temple legend

Rama installs the linga at Rameswaram

Rama worships Shiva as a linga on the island of Rameswaram — before the bridge in the Ramayana, or after Ravana's death to expiate the killing of a brahmin in temple tradition, where Sita's sand linga and Hanuman's linga from Kailasa stand side by side.
How a tradition frames it

Hanuman as Shiva's own avatar

Shaiva texts and popular tellings say that when Vishnu chose to be born as Rama, Shiva chose to be born as Hanuman — his eleventh Rudra — to serve him; Vaishnava schools call Hanuman the son and incarnation of Vayu.
Temple legend

Rama's linga at Rameswaram

Rama wishes to worship Shiva on the island before crossing to Lanka, or after killing Ravana, to be cleansed of killing a brahmin.