As Ahobilam tells it
the Nallamala hills and the Chenchu songs · 2 min read
High above the temples of Upper Ahobilam, eight kilometres up a hard path through the Nallamala forest, a mountain stands split in two from top to bottom. The people of the hill call the cleft Ugra Stambham, the fierce pillar. This, they say, is the pillar the man-lion burst out of.
When the demon king was dead, Narasimha did not go back to his heaven. The hills held him. He walked in the forest, among the rocks and waterfalls, and the anger slowly went out of him, and he stayed.
The hills were not empty. They belonged to the Chenchus, a people of hunters and honey gatherers who had lived in the Nallamala forest longer than anyone could remember. One day, in the forest, the man-lion saw a Chenchu girl, a daughter of the hunters, and fell in love with her.
He went to her people and asked for her.
They looked him over, this stranger from nowhere with his mane and his claws.
"You want to marry one of us?" said her father. "Then live like one of us. Show us you can do what we do."
"What must I do?" said Narasimha.
"Climb," said the hunters. "Climb the cliffs where the bees build. Bring down the honey. Track the deer. Hunt as we hunt. Then we will see."
So the god who had torn open a king with his bare hands went to work as a Chenchu. He climbed the sheer rock faces where the great combs hang, and brought down the honey without being stung to death. He tracked game through the forest, and he hunted, and brought back what he caught. He did it all their way, by their rules, for as long as they asked.
At the end of it the hunters were satisfied.
"He can stay," they said. "He is one of us now."
So they married him to their daughter, the hunter girl, and the hills had a wedding. The Chenchus call her Chenchu Lakshmi, and they say she was Lakshmi herself, born among them to bring the angry lion home.
The Chenchus who live near the shrine still sing the wedding, in their own language, as a story about their own family. The lord of Ahobilam is their son-in-law. That is how they speak of him.
