Temple legend · 4 tellings · Pan-India, South India
Bhrigu's kick and the coming of Srinivasa
The sage Bhrigu tests the three gods and kicks the reclining Vishnu; in the Bhagavata Vishnu's humility settles the matter, while the Tirumala tradition adds Lakshmi's departure to Kolhapur and Vishnu's descent as Srinivasa, who marries Padmavati on borrowed money.
On the bank of the Sarasvati a company of sages fall to arguing about which of the three great gods is supreme, and Bhrigu is chosen to test them. He enters Brahma's hall and offers no greeting; Brahma's anger rises and he holds it down because the sage is his son. He goes to Shiva and refuses his embrace; Shiva lifts the trident until the goddess pleads with him. Then he comes to Vishnu, who lies with his head in Lakshmi's lap, and kicks him on the chest. Vishnu gets up at once, welcomes the brahmin, begs pardon for not having risen to receive him, and massages the foot as though it were the one that had been hurt, saying that its touch has cleansed his chest and made it a worthier seat for Lakshmi. The sages, hearing the report, are satisfied that the god of sattva is the refuge of the world. In this telling Lakshmi says nothing, shows no anger and goes nowhere.
Devdutt Pattanaik retells the temple story with his own interpretation: Vishnu's apology won over the sage but not the goddess; she withdrew to Karavirapura; and Vishnu chose the seven hills because they reminded him of Shesha's hoods, so the god of Tirupati is a god in debt playing for his wife's return. Cite as Pattanaik's argument, not tradition.
What is different here:
Adds an interpretive frame (the hills as Shesha's hoods, the god in debt) that belongs to the author.
The Tirumala tradition begins where the Bhagavata ends. When Vishnu rubs the sage's foot he crushes the extra eye Bhrigu carried in his sole — the source of the sage's pride. Lakshmi, however, cannot forgive that her husband's chest, her own home, was struck and that he honoured the one who struck it; she leaves Vaikuntha and settles at Karavirapura, today's Kolhapur. Vishnu, searching for her, comes to the Venkata hill, takes shelter in an anthill under a tamarind tree, and does penance for twelve years. Vakula Devi — Yashoda reborn so that she may see Krishna wed — fosters him as Srinivasa. The local king Akasha Raja has found a girl in a lotus field and raised her as Padmavati; she is Lakshmi born again. Srinivasa asks for her, and to pay for a wedding fit for a god he borrows from Kubera. The marriage is held at Narayanavanam, and the god stays on the hill until the debt is cleared. The deity is described in the Brahmanda, Bhavishyottara, Padma and Skanda Puranas; this Mahatmyam is the accepted temple account.
What is different here:
Adds the eye on Bhrigu's foot, Lakshmi's anger and departure to Kolhapur, the twelve-year penance, the birth as Srinivasa with Vakula Devi as foster mother, the marriage to Padmavati and the loan from Kubera. None of this is in Bhagavata 10.89.
Pilgrim lore fills in the sum and the terms. Kubera lends a vast quantity of gold coins, to be repaid with interest by the end of the Kali age, and every offering dropped into the temple's hundi is understood as helping the god settle what he owes. The figures differ from one site to the next.
What is different here:
Supplies loan figures and the hundi-as-repayment interpretation, neither of which has a textual citation.
Sources: Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.89 (Bhaktivedanta Vedabase); Tirupati: playing dice with a god in debt — Devdutt Pattanaik; Venkateswara — Wikipedia; Legend of Tirumala — Wikipedia; Venkateswara Temple, Tirumala — Wikipedia; The Divine Loan: Lord Balaji and Kubera — tirumalahills.org; Lord Venkateswara — hinduismfacts.org