274. Trip to Pancha-Narasimhar Kshetras – Part 1
I am dividing this blog into three parts as it became too large😊! I wanted to add more stuff about the temple so that you too would enjoy reading this and would want to visit these places once😊!!
Last year itself my wife had told me of these 5 Sri Narasimhar temples that are present in Andhra-Telangana region. All these places have self-manifested deities of Sri Narasimhar perumal. Sri Rajyalakshmi devi is the consort of Sri Narasimhar in all the temples. The places being Wadapally, Kethavaram, Mattapalli, Vedadri and Mangalagiri. I had checked out the places in Google maps and estimated that this could be done in 2 days.
Last month, we decided that we will undertake this trip after my daughter’s board exams. Plan was to reach Vijayawada by overnight train and seeing these places from there. 2-day trip and return back to Hyderabad by night train on the second day. I checked with few people if they are interested to accompany us; only those who can travel on weekdays, as I wanted to visit temples only on weekdays due to less crowds😊! Somehow it didn’t work out and we decided to do this trip ourselves – me, my wife and my daughter. When I rechecked the places, I found that instead of going to Vijayawada and starting the trip from there, it was prudent to start from Hyderabad itself as 4 of the 5 temples were on the route to Vijayawada from Hyderabad!
We started the trip from our home at 3:30am in my car on 5th April and reached back home by 10:30pm on 6th April. We stayed the night at a Vijayawada hotel. The trip went perfect and we had exclusive darshans at all the places – no crowd at all😊! In addition to these temples, since we were in Vijayawada, I decided to visit some interesting places in Guntur too, while returning to Hyderabad, thereby making it a literal “round trip”😊!! A total of 943 kms travelled during this trip of 2 days, with close to 10 hours driving each day😊!! I would be really a crazy person to do this trip again😊!!
Started at 330am from our house and reached Wadapally at 630am. Temple was supposed to open at 7am, but there was no sign of it being opened, even after 7am. There was a sweeper lady also waiting for the temple to open. Apparently, her family has been sweeping the temple for decades. She herself has been sweeping it for more than 30 years now! I asked the lady for the purohit’s number. She said it was written on the wall of the temple but got erased when the temple was white washed. Later got the purohit’s number from a signboard on the road near the temple. I called him on his mobile (Mr Ramanuja Charyulu -9908804566). He came immediately and opened the temple. He mentioned that he had gone outstation and had reached his home late last night; else by 630am the temple would have been opened. We were the only visitors and had a nice darshan and did archanai. Apparently this purohit has been here at the temple since 1996!! He presented to us a saree and a veshti that was earlier put on the deities.
Purana says 6000 years back Agyasthya muni brought the Siva Kesava idols and he wanted to install them. He was traveling through all Lokas and finally he landed in Bholokaham, as he was heading towards Kasi kshetram, he heard akasa vani saying that Lord Narashima wanted to be installed at this place where sangamam of River Krishna and River Musi.
Agyastayar installed and constructed a temple for Lord Narashimar. As the years passed there was lot of changes and the temple was not taken care and the main deity was covered by ant hill.
During 12th century Reddy Kings developed their city and at that time they found the deity of Narashimar and they reconstructed the temple and installed the main deity.
The temple is small one and has lot of place, around it with trees and plants. We see Dwjasthanbam near the entrance and Garuda near the Dwajasthambam. As we enter inside we have the darshan of Jaya, Vijayan to either side of the entrance. We have to enter into artha mandapam and inside in the main sanctum we have the darshan of Lord Lakshmi Narashima swamy. There is no separate sanctum for Goddess. This is the only sanctum in the temple.
Inside the main sanctum we see two lamps lit and tied to a pole next to deity. One lamp is to the height of main god and the other is half way down. The light lit to the lamp on the top is wavering where as the one to the other lamp is still. They say the shake in the light is due to the breath of Lord Narashima in the main sanctum. This is a unique thing about the Lord of this place. The deepam here is Akanda Deepam.
We also saw this phenomenon. For the 30-45 minutes we were there in front of the lord, the diya on the top kept on wavering but the diya at the bottom never wavered. On closer scrutiny, we saw that the top of the diya had its wick stuck out longer than the wick at the bottom. Maybe this was the case, scientifically. But cannot be sure😊!
Thanks to the Wadapally purohit, we got the number for the Kethavaram purohit (Mr Prasanna Kumar – 9705223505) who asked us to visit Kethavaram first as the final stretch to the temple was through a jungle. He whatsapped the route map to his place from Wadapally. We travelled for around 1.5 hours and reached the place mentioned in the whatsapp. On the right side, there was a kachcha road that was going inside. There was a sign board with the Temple deity photo, the purohit and 2-3 others photo. Google maps was saying to go straight and not take any turn😊! I called Mr Prasanna and he confirmed for me to take the kachcha road. The sign board said it was 10 kms to the temple. I took the kachcha road and had a hell of a ride😊!! The 10kms stretch took approximately 1 hour to complete😊! With my Honda City car having a low road-clearance, somehow, I managed to complete it without causing much damage to the car😊. Moreover, the bushes/trees on both sides kept on brushing past the car. Google maps was showing some other way to the temple and was showing that I was cruising through unmarked area😊!! You can check out this drive in the video that I would be publishing at the end of the 3rd blog on this topic!
Kethavaram is an ancient Narasimha Kshetra situated on the banks of River Krishna in Andhra Pradesh.
Kethavaram was named after the King Ketha Varma who ruled this region. Kethavaram is also called as Kaataaram or Kethaaram in the scriptures. Once, during the reign of KethaVarma, the Lord appeared in the dream of a Yadava King who ruled a nearby land and told him about His(Lord’s) presence in the hill of Kethavaram. The Yadava King immediately conveyed this message to King Ketha Varma, who conducted an extensive search in the hill and finally discovered the Swayambhu Moorthy of Lord Sri Narasimha.
Kethavarma constructed a temple at the place and arranged for NityaPooja. Festivals began to be celebrated at a grand splendour. Lord Narasimha graces the devotees with Mother Mahalakshmi. There is also a shrine for Sri Anjaneya in this temple.
Vajralaya – While digging the land here for a tank, one worker was hit by a stone and it began bleeding. Testing the rock, it turned to be a diamond rock. Further digging brought out some idols also. Hence, Lord Narasimha is praised as Vajralaya, vajram meaning diamond.
Sri Narasimha Swamy at Kethavaram is a Swayambhu Moorthy (self-manifested deity). The Mother Goddess is Chenchu Lakshmi. There are 2 temples here. One is at the foot of the hill and the other is at the hill top.
As the temple is situated in a dense jungle area, the temple at the foot hill temple is open during the visit of devotees.
Finally, we reached and met the purohit. He asked us to accompany his son to the temple on the top, a further 600 steps ahead. His son was also a purohit and it seems that their family has been designated as the purohits for this temple. He said the car can also go through a different route and asked me to follow his son in his bike. So, with another 10-minute drive through the kachcha road and bushes, we reached the top and had darshan of the temple.
I asked the purohit’s son if I can video call my mother so that she too can have the darshan (my mother is in Jakarta now with my brother). He said no problem. He started the archanai and I called my mother on Whatsapp. After a few seconds, the purohit’s son took my mobile and himself started showing all the deities and other areas to my mother and started explaining to her on the call😊!! There was only one other group of 5 people with us. They waited till we had complete darshan and then went for the darshan. A few steps down (around 30) is the Narasimhar temple. We had an excellent darshan here too, with video-calling my mother on whatsapp for the darshan. Apparently, this temple at the top has been built with the donation of some Telugu family from America for Rs 86 lakhs. The guy’s parents’ photo was kept in the temple as a gratitude to them.
Apparently, the Krishna river has swallowed almost 30-40% of the temple premises. We could see some top portions of 1-2 temples sticking out in the Krishna river. And the local government does not give any aid and they have to fend for themselves in the upkeep of the temple.
Then we came down and Mr Prasannna gave us the tour of the temple there. He too took my phone and explained about the temple’s history to my mother on whatsapp video call😊!! We had a very nice darshan and left the place with the phone number of the Mattapalli’s purohit, Mr Phani (8688395256). When I called Mr Phani, he said the temple will open till 1pm and then will be closed. It will open again at 4pm.
I too will close this blog here and continue in the next blog😊!!
Cheers till next time😊!!
PS – Details of
the temple were taken from www.srinarasimhakutumbam.org/temples/divya-kshetra
Super
ReplyDelete