Sita Ramachandraswamy, Bhadrachalam

What he spent, he was made to answer for: imprisoned at Golconda, he passed twelve years in confinement, and out of that darkness came the Ramadasu Keerthanalu and the Dasarathi Satakam — pleading, reproaching, adoring — the songs of a servant who will not let go, sung in this temple still. The tradition tells the ending as only bhakti can: at the twelfth year's end Rama and Lakshmana went themselves to the Sultan as two youths, Ramoji and Lakshmoji, and paid the whole sum in Rama madas, coins bearing the Lord's own image. He freed his tahsildar, and from that time pearls were sent for the Lord's wedding — a courtesy the Nizams kept and the State keeps still.

That wedding is the year's great day. On Chaitra Shukla Navami, under Rama's own star Punarvasu, the Sitarama Kalyanam is solemnised before lakhs, the muhurta between ten and half past twelve, the talambralu — the wedding rice — showered upon the deities at noon exactly. The State offers pattu vastralu and muthyala talambralu, pearls among that rice; next day Rama is crowned in the Pattabhishekam.

At Mukkoti Ekadashi — Vaikuntha Ekadashi in the Telugu south — the Uttara Dwaram of the northern gate opens before dawn and the devotee walks through the door of liberation itself, ten days of Pagalpattu leading to it and ten of Rapattu after, the Teppotsavam floating the Lord upon the Godavari. Pilgrims call this hill Dakshina Ayodhya; and Bhadra, who asked only to be sat upon, is the measure of what is given here.

Bhadrachalam rises on a hill above the Godavari, in the Dandakaranya of the Ramayana, where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana passed the vanavasa; Parnasala, from which Sita was borne away, lies some thirty-two kilometres upstream. The hill bears the name of Bhadra — a boon-child of Meru and Menaka, as the temple tells it — who took the Rama Taraka mantra from Narada and kept tapas on this bank through the yugas, asking only that the Lord be seated upon him. Rama promised to return once Sita was found; the promise outlived the avatara, and Mahavishnu came again in Rama's form — in haste, and so as he stands in Vaikuntha: four arms, shankha and chakra above, bow and arrow below. This is the Vaikuntha Rama of Bhadragiri.

The murtis here are held swayambhu. Tradition remembers Pokala Dhammakka, a woman of the forest counted of Shabari's line, shown them in a dream, who dissolved with Godavari water the anthill that hid them and served them until the bhakta should come to build.

He came in the seventeenth century: Kancherla Gopanna, whom the Telugu land knows as Bhakta Ramadasu, tahsildar of Palvancha paragana under Abul Hasan Tana Shah, the last Sultan of Golconda. Finding the shrine ruinous he raised it anew, spending — when his own means and the villagers' gifts ran out — revenue gathered for the treasury: six lakh varahas.

The temple is the hill, and the hill is the bhakta: its three parts are read upon Bhadra's body — the shrine at the crown his head, where Rama's footprints are shown on rock under white thirunamam; the sanctum at his heart; the Rajagopuram at his feet, fifty steps below the entrance. Of its four gateways the northern is the Vaikuntha Dwaram. Before the sanctum stands a gold-plated panchaloha dhwajastambham carved with Garuda; over the vimana turns the eight-faced, thousand-cornered Sudarshana Chakra that Gopanna, tradition says, drew from the river. Worship follows the Pancharatra Agama in the manner of Srirangam, for whose sake Gopanna brought five families of that tradition here and set Ranganatha reclining on the taller hill above, the Ranganayakula Gutta. The Devasthanam is administered by the Endowments Department of Telangana.