Devalok
Local story · 1 telling · South India

The tribal woman who found Rama at Bhadrachalam

Pokala Dhammakka finds the images of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana in an anthill; the revenue officer Ramadasu builds the temple in 1674 and is jailed for using the state's money.

Who is in it

Places: Bhadrachalam

The story, beat by beat

  1. Rama tells a tribal woman in a dream that his images lie hidden on the Bhadrachalam hill.
  2. Pokala Dhammakka finds the figures of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana in an anthill by the Godavari and begins to worship them under a thatch.
  3. Kancharla Gopanna, the revenue collector of the region, comes on the shrine and resolves to build a temple.
  4. He uses the state's tax money for it, finishing the temple in 1674.
  5. The Golconda sultan imprisons him for the missing revenue; he composes his songs to Rama in prison.
  6. Rama and Lakshmana, the story says, repay the sultan in person, and Gopanna is freed as Ramadasu.

discovery devotion imprisonment tribal worship

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Bhadrachalam temple tradition

South India · Bhadrachalam, Telangana Vaishnava Koya tribal and Telugu

Bhadrachalam's Rama was found by a woman of the hills. Pokala Dhammakka, of the local tribal people, was told in a dream where the god waited, and dug his images — Rama with Sita and Lakshmana — out of an anthill above the Godavari; she raised a thatched shelter over them and served them with what she had. In the seventeenth century the tax collector of the district, Kancharla Gopanna, found her shrine and could not leave it as it was. He built a temple, finished in 1674, and paid for it from the revenue he had gathered for the sultan of Golconda. For that he was thrown into prison, where he composed the songs by which Telugu speakers still know him as Ramadasu. The tradition ends with Rama and Lakshmana appearing at the sultan's court to pay the debt themselves. The epic itself never brings Rama here; the story is the town's way of claiming him.

Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam — Wikipedia; Rama Navami — Wikipedia

Sources: Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam — Wikipedia; Rama Navami — Wikipedia

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