Sree Padmanabhaswamy

The form here is Ananta Shayana. Padmanabha reclines upon Adisesha, whose five hoods turn inward in contemplation; his right hand rests over a Shiva linga, Sridevi and Bhudevi beside him, and Brahma rises on the lotus from his navel — the padma-nabha that gives the deity his name. The image, about eighteen feet long, is held to be composed of 12,008 salagrama stones from the Gandaki in Nepal.

It is too long to be seen whole. The devotee ascends to the mandapam and takes darshan through three doors — the head and chest through the first, the hands and the golden abhisheka images through the second, the feet through the third — the Lord never held in a single glance, only gathered slowly in the mind. Only the Maharaja may prostrate on the ottakkal-mandapam: to lie down there is to surrender all one owns, and the ruler, having given his kingdom away, has nothing further to give.

The year turns on two ten-day utsavams — Alpasi in Thulam and Painkuni in Meenam — each closing with the Aarat procession to Shankhumukham beach; and, once in six years, on Lakshadeepam, when a lakh of lamps are lit at the end of the fifty-six-day Murajapam recitation.

Two things should be said plainly. Entry is permitted only to those who profess the Hindu faith, and the rule is applied at the gate. The dress code is strict: men wear a mundu or dhoti to the heels, bare-chested or with an angavastram, and no shirt of any kind; women a sari, mundum neriyathum, skirt and blouse or half-sari. Stitched, bifurcated garments are not allowed; dhotis are hired at the gate. Photography inside is prohibited.

Within the East Fort, at the heart of Thiruvananthapuram, stands the temple of Sree Padmanabhaswamy, where Vishnu lies in yogic sleep upon Adisesha, the endless serpent. The city takes its name from him — Thiru Ananta Puram, the city of Ananta. Tamil hymns of the seventh and eighth centuries count it among the hundred and eight Divya Desams of the Alvars; Nammalvar sang the glory of Padmanabha here, and the Divya Prabandha places it among the thirteen of Malai Nadu.

The shrine is far older than its present stone: it is named in Sangam-age Tamil literature and in the Puranas, and a record-room raised inside the compound in 1425 held the Mathilakam papers, palm-leaf documents by the million. The temple as it stands owes most to Marthanda Varma of Travancore, whose renewal ended with the re-consecration of the deity in 906 ME (1731 CE).

On 17 January 1750 that same king made the gift that still defines the place: he surrendered the kingdom of Travancore to Padmanabhaswamy, and pledged that he and his heirs would hold it only as his servants. The act is remembered as the Thrippadidanam, and every Travancore ruler after him bore the title Sree Padmanabha Dasa. Since July 2020 its secular affairs have rested with a committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India, which upheld the family's traditional rights.

The temple joins two traditions — the tiled roofs and timber gables of Kerala around a Dravidian tower. The gopuram above the east gate, its foundation laid in 1566, rises a hundred feet in seven tiers of Pandyan work, with an eighty-foot flagstaff sheathed in gold-plated copper before it. A corridor of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter carved granite pillars runs from the east into the sanctum; the Padma Theertham, the lotus tank, lies alongside.

The ottakkal-mandapam, the single-stone platform before the deity, was cut from a rock at Tirumala and set in place in 1731. Beneath the temple lie six vaults, the kallaras: five were inventoried from 2011 under Supreme Court orders and gave up gold, gems and old coinage whose worth has never been officially settled. Vault B has never been opened.