This is episode number 100! A big milestone indeed! But strictly speaking we’ve already done more than a 100 if you include the bonus and the mini episodes.
I just can’t thank you listeners enough for all your support. The show is going strong and I have a lot more stories to tell. While I have touched on all the major story categories you know- vikram betaal, ramayana, mahabharat, panchatantra, jataka tales, tenali Raman, akbar birbal, there are a few that I am yet to start on. Like the singhasan battisi, kathasaritasagar. I am also contemplating covering historical fantasy like the original version of Chandrakanta, and historical fiction like Ponniyin Selvan. And of course, there are many regional folk tales that are deeply interesting or exciting if not mind blowing at times.
Your feedback is invaluable to me – please do let me know if there are any particular stories you would like to hear. I would love to cover those first.
In this episode, we’re going to cover a story about Vishnu. And how the famous Tirupati Balaji temple was founded.
Our story starts with me! Yes! Remember? I’m a bona fide mythological character myself. I was doing my usual rounds of the world. That’s my job after all! Traveling story-teller, remember?
So there I was walking around the world when I reached an ashram. A group of rishis was in a hot debate about a fire. And the debate wasn’t hot because of the fire. I mean that figuratively. They were in the ancient Indian version of a family squabble about which television channel they should watch next. Only, because it was ancient India, the topic of the debate was whom to pray to in their next set of prayers. It seems that the rishis were more or less evenly divided into three camps – one for each of the Holy Trinity – Vishnu the preserver, Brahma the creator, and Shiva the destroyer.
The debate was deadlocked, no one wanted to give in. So it was when I approached the group. 12 rishis turned to face me and observing me, all 12 faces smiled as if struck by the same idea. As it happened, they were indeed struck by the same idea all at once. Here I was, a potential tiebreaker.
Regardless of what I chose, I knew that I would get bad press. If I picked Brahma, people would accuse me of nepotism. You see Brahma is my father.
If I picked Vishnu I’d be accused of favoritism as well. I’m president for life of Vishnu’s fan club. And if I picked Shiva, well maybe I might be okay. But just this year, Shiva awarded me the musician of the year award. It doesn’t take much for social media to twist a little fact that into an accusation of favoritism.
But it’s not easy to trap me in a tricky situation like that. I have knowledge of the future too, remember? So I decided to weasel out of this situation.
“I’m not a rishi,” I said. “I can’t break a tie. My vote counts for way lower than any of yours”
“It’s still enough to tip the scales,” said one pedantic rishi.
I had anticipated that. “Yeah, but what you want is a clear winner. A victory by a tiny margin almost shouldn’t count. When a gap of 6 million votes isn’t enough to convince everyone, here we’re just talking about just a fraction of a single vote”
This drew blank stares from the crowd of rishis. No wonder. I keep confusing between the future and the past sometimes. “Never mind. The solution is simple. You just have to talk to Brighu” I suggested.
At this point, I should explain that Brighu is a hall-of-fame rishi. One of the famous Saptarishis. He’s even visible in the night sky. He is one of the stars in the Big Dipper or Ursa Major constellation.
Brighu was also my brother. But being a very temperamental rishi, no one would dare accuse him of favoritism.
Brighu was in the vicinity, just as I had foreseen. I accompanied the rishis as they approached him. Brighu was willing to help. He promised to visit each of the three deities, in turn, to decide who should be worshipped next.
“You know,” said the pedantic rishi, speaking for all “we were just hoping you’d pick one name right now. You don’t have to go and visit each one. It’ll take forever. Honestly, it’s fine. Just pick a name at random”
But my brother is not one to cut any corners. Give him a task and he’ll do it perfectly. Regardless of all the trouble that he’ll create for everyone around him.
I knew what was going to happen. That is why when my brother, Brighu, invited me to accompany him, I politely refused. I headed straight for Vishnu’s home.
Brighu was visiting Brahma and Shiva first, I knew. But I knew what was going to happen there, so I went straight to Vishnu. I reached Vishnu’s home in the ocean of milk, where he was sleeping just then within the coils of the Ultimate Snake, Shesh Naag. Laxmi was around. I told her what was coming, but after discussing it we both agreed that it would not be wise to wake up Vishnu. As I had anticipated, Brighu showed up just then.
He was looking chuffed.
Laxmi usually has a very calming effect on people. She asked my brother “Narada’s been filling me in on what you’re up to. How did it go with your dad? And Shiva?”.
She didn’t really need an answer, because you see I had already told her everything. She was just playing for time, hoping that Vishnu would wake up by himself before the conversation ran dry.
Brighu explained how Dad had been most disrespectful. As he had been busy talking to mom. He didn’t even answer the doorbell until after Brighu had cursed him. And by a curse, I don’t just mean bad language. This was something much worse. A Saptarishi’s curse can be very powerful indeed. So when Brighu said that no one on Earth would worship Brahma, that’s precisely what it led to.
Shiva was similarly busy and was similarly cursed into not being worshipped in his normal form. That’s why idols of Shiva aren’t the same shape as other gods who are depicted in a more human-like form.
What Brighu didn’t know is that he had come very close to.…ahem….entering history books a little prematurely. Shiva the destroyer, came really close to destroying my brother. All that saved him was intervention from Shiva’s wife Parvati.
I didn’t think it was wise to point this out. Besides, it wasn’t going to change the outcome here. Speaking of which, the conversation had gone rather dry. Brighu coughed to break the silence and asked if Vishnu was around. Lakshmi resignedly said Vishnu was sleeping. Couldn’t Brighu see? The coils of a snake, even the Ultimate Snake aren’t really built with a separate bedroom in mind.
Brighu had noticed of course. He hadn’t wanted to point it out himself in case this was one of Vishnu’s famous illusions or Maya. But now that Lakshmi had admitted it, Brighu got a license to be enraged.
Angrily he stormed towards Vishnu and kicked him hard in his chest. Lakshmi’s jaw dropped and she was clearly not happy. Vishnu didn’t seem to mind, however. Brighu’s kick had woken him up. He began gently massaging Brighu’s feet as a sign of respect.
Now a fact that I completely neglected to mention so far is that Brighu had a third eye at the base of his foot. And that Vishnu’s touch instantly vaporized it. A side effect of this vaporization was that Brighu was instantly pacified. His impatience was concentrated in his third eye, and when that vanished Brighu became calm. Now it’s a bit hard to explain how exactly that works, but one way to think about it is this. If part of your vision was constrained forever to view the insoles of your shoes it’s unlikely you’ll have a very positive view of the world.
“Did you say he has a third eye that stares at his inner soul?” whispered Lakshmi
“No,” I whispered back. “Not soul as in the spiritual or immaterial part of the human body. I mean inner sole as in the fixed part of the inside of a shoe. S.O.L.E”
Brighu was a lot calmer and even friendly now that he had lost his disgruntled eye, but the damage was done. Lakshmi was not happy. She thought Vishnu should have been a little forceful with Brighu. I mean the cheek of it. Vishnu was the preserver of the entire Universe. Was it fair for an ordinary mortal to treat him like this? True, Brighu was a Saptarishi, but Lakshmi was sure a dozen different protocols were being violated here. She did what she thought was solving the problem in her own way. She left home.
That disappointed Vishnu. He had no idea where she went.
Vishnu traveled the world looking for her. He didn’t find her because Lakshmi was a super-powerful goddess herself. She had the ability to go into stealth mode.
Despite not having much luck in locating Lakshmi, Vishnu did know that she was on Earth, and more specifically somewhere within the borders of the Chola kingdom. That’s where her last letter was postmarked from.
Vishnu set up his base camp within the borders of the Chola Kingdom. His base camp was inside an anthill near a tamarind tree on the Venkat hill.
Vishnu was clearly not his normal self. Anyone with divine superpowers could see that! So it was that Shiva and Brahma decided to do something to help.
Instead of sending him a care package as some others might have done, they decided to go to Vishnu’s aid themselves. In person. Or rather not as a person. But as a cow and a calf.
They somehow arranged to enter the royal herd of the Chola king. For some reason, the King personally oversaw the purchase of the cow and calf from a merchant. Even this micromanager of a King could see that there was something special about his most recent purchase at the cattle exchange.
He decided to appoint a cowherd whose full-time job it would be to watch this pair. Not surprising. When you’re the King, you get to indulge in such extravagances.
Well, the cowherd observed something odd the very first day he was walking the cow and the calf. The cow wandered right over to a particular anthill on the Venkat hill. There she did something that the cowherd didn’t know was even possible. She emptied her udders over the anthill. And something in the anthill seemed to be drinking the milk! The calf meanwhile stood around shuffling its feet, looking awkward. No wonder. Brahma had picked a form that was completely useless to Vishnu. As usual, he had left the hard work to Shiva.
After that, every day, Shiva in the form of the cow kept nourishing the anthill. Well, the King noticed at some point of course when his micromanagement wasn’t yielding milk. The cow looked healthy and the fact that he hadn’t gotten a drop of milk from her was annoying the King greatly now. It had to be her diet, he thought. That day, he instructed the cowherd to strictly monitor what she ate. If the cow did not yield milk, it would be the cowherd’s neck.
So it was that the cowherd decided to take along with him a tool. If he had simply milked the cow before going for their walk, things would have been easier for him.
However, what he did was carry an ax with him. He probably meant to frighten the cow.
Well, the cow was not going to be intimidated by that. She ignored his bluff charge when she again emptied her udders on the anthill. But then the cowherd did lose his temper and hurled the ax at her, not stopping to think what the King would do to him for essentially wiping out his investment.
As the ax whirled through the air, rushing madly towards Shiva in the cow form, something sprang up from the anthill and intercepted it. It was Vishnu. He was shielding the cow and calf from the brutal throw of the ax. Unfortunately, he got hit himself.
The cowherd realized with a shock that it was Vishnu before him. His offense was completely unpardonable. He had harmed the lord and preserver of the universe. He did not deserve to live in society. Morosely he wandered off and vowed to never return.
This incident meanwhile somehow reached the ears of the King. As if you didn’t have enough examples of the King’s management style, here’s another. The King personally took his bow and arrows and rushed to the last known location of the cow and calf. When he got there, he saw the cow and calf alright, but he also saw Vishnu!
Vishnu was not happy with the King. Not because of his management style, Vishnu’s chief grievance was that the King had created a culture in which his subjects would dare to use a weapon in a rash way.
The King’s punishment was to be reborn as another King. When Vishnu added that out of pity he had decided to marry the King’s daughter in his next life, the King was puzzled. He really didn’t see the downside here. Why was Vishnu calling this a punishment then?
Regardless, that was exactly what happened in the future.
The King was reborn as Akasa Raja. And his daughter was a gift from the gods. Literally. He had prayed for a child and one day a baby girl came floating down to him in a river on a particularly large lotus. Akasa Raja decided to raise her as his own and call her Padmavati.
Padmavati encountered Srinivas one day. Srinivas was the reincarnation of Vishnu. A completely normal courtship with the small unusual incident of Srinivas rescuing Padmavati from being trampled by a wild elephant. Just your everyday romance.
Meanwhile, remember the anthill where Vishnu had lived? Well, guess what, it had lost the shade of the tamarind tree now.
As a farmer was passing by, he had a vision of Vishnu right there in the middle of the anthill. He also had an idea. For some reason, he had the urge to feed the ants milk. Don’t try this at home. Unless you have divine ants. Regular ants will probably down in milk.
Well in this case when the farmer was pouring milk down the anthill, it washed away revealing a statue of Vishnu, Padmavati, and Lakshmi.
Now if that wasn’t s a clear sign he didn’t know what was. So the farmer went about marking off the area, eventually building an entire temple around this statue.
That temple is now famously known as the Tirupati Balaji temple.
It’s the descendants of the cowherd who now manage the gates to the temple.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The story does not mention what happened with the Rishis choice. I can assure you that Brighu chose Vishnu. But it doesn’t really matter. Vishnu had moved on to focus on other things.
There are loose ends in this story. What happened to Shiva and Brahma as the Calf and Cow? Did they return? Also, why did Brahma really pick the form of a calf? That was so unhelpful!
How did Vishnu actually manage to locate Lakshmi from his anthill?
And most importantly whom did the Rishis actually worship? One thing is for sure, they weren’t happy with the long-winded way of figuring this out. They managed to avoid asking Brighu, or me for that matter to intervene. It’s a good thing. They’ve managed to sort out their differences by themselves. They even installed a wheel of names. A spinning wheel with labels of the deities on different sectors. The wheel is spun and whatever a fixed pointer lands on when the wheel stops spinning that’s the name they will worship. It’s a lot easier to have such complicated decisions be made by nature.
Lakshmi was previously featured in Episode 80 – Narada – A Beauty Contest. I made an appearance in that one too!
The holy trinity – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva have featured prominently in multiple episodes, including the Samudra Manthan (Episode 51 – Oceans Rising, Episode 52 – Oceans Rising Higher, and Episode 53 – Open the Quantum Gate!) and the origin story of the Ganga: Episode 42 – River Mother
Brahma features prominently in Episode 46 – Brahma and Shiva in Episode 43 – Dancing With The Gods.
Vishnu’s other avatars are covered in a number of different episodes as well, including Episode 1 – Unicorn Fish, Episode 20 – The Aunt from Hell, Episode 21 – Final Destiny, Episode 86 – Vishnu – Parshuram. The Varaha avatar was featured as the character of the week in Episode 9 – A clever Minister in King Akbar’s court.
And of course, the Ramayan and Mahabharat are epics with Vishnu’s avatars at the center.
Maya or the power of illusion is explained in the pilot Episode 0: Rock Star
Here’s also a map showing the extent of the Chola empire
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll go back into the Ramayana. We’re going to rejoin the Ayodhya brothers as what started as a scuffle with the Rakshasas was now quickly escalating into a full-out war. The next stage of the conflict? The second, and more famous abduction of Sita.