Devalok
Temple legend · 2 tellings · South India

Srinivasa and Padmavati

Srinivasa, living on the hill with his foster mother Vakula, chases a wild elephant into a garden and meets the princess Padmavati, and her maids drive him off with stones. Sick with love, he goes to the palace as a fortune-teller woman and tells the princess she will marry the man she met. The wedding is held at Narayanavanam, and the temple repeats it every day.

Who is in it

Places: Narayanavanam, Tirumala, Tiruchanur · Texts: Venkatachala Mahatmya

The story, beat by beat

  1. Srinivasa, hunting on the hill, chases a wild elephant into a garden where the princess Padmavati is playing with her friends.
  2. He asks who she is; her maids throw stones and drive him away; he goes home ill with love.
  3. Vakula goes to ask for the princess; meanwhile Srinivasa disguises himself as a Yerukala fortune-teller woman and enters the palace.
  4. The fortune-teller reads Padmavati's palm: she will marry the man she met in the garden.
  5. Akasha Raja agrees; Kubera lends for the wedding, held at Narayanavanam.
  6. The Kalyanotsavam at Tirumala performs the wedding every day for pilgrims.

love disguise wedding ritual

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Temple tradition

Tirumala temple legend: the garden and the fortune-teller

South India · Tirumala and Narayanavanam Vaishnava

Srinivasa, out hunting, follows a wild elephant that has broken into a royal garden. There he sees Padmavati among her friends, and asks who she is. Her maids answer with stones and he goes home sick. Padmavati too falls ill. The maids call a fortune-teller woman into the palace, and it is the Lord himself in her clothes, a basket on the head and a stick in the hand. She reads the princess's palm and says that the man in the garden is Vishnu himself, and that she was born to marry him. Padmavati recovers. Vakula comes to ask for her, and the king, after asking his teacher, agrees, and sets the date.

Temple legend, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (official site)

Temple tradition

Narayanavanam and the daily wedding

South India · Narayanavanam and Tirumala Vaishnava

For the wedding the bridegroom borrows from Kubera, with Brahma and Shiva as witnesses, and the gods come down to Narayanavanam, where Akasha Raja gives his daughter and a crown, and the old curse on him ends. The bride and groom go up to the hill. The temple keeps the wedding as the Kalyanotsavam, a marriage performed every day for pilgrims who pay to sponsor it, so that the god is married again each morning in front of a new crowd.

Temple legend, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (official site); Sri Venkatesa Ashtottaram 89, 'Chola putra priyaya', Oppiliappan archive (V. Sadagopan)

Sources: Temple legend, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (official site); Sri Venkatesa Ashtottaram 89, 'Chola putra priyaya', Oppiliappan archive (V. Sadagopan)

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