Why Sri Padmanabhaswamy chambers were opened
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/07/special-why-sri-padmanabhaswamy.html
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011
Why Sri Padmanabhaswamy chambers were opened - DNA
Special: Why Sri Padmanabhaswamy chambers were opened - DNA
TP Sundararajan, who died on Sunday aged 70, obtained a court order which has led, this summer, to the opening of the vaults of the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The underground chambers, which had been sealed for more than 140 years, are so far reported to have revealed a staggering hoard of antique gold ornaments, crowns, weapons, statues of Hindu deities, vessels made of gold, coins minted when the East India Company dominated trade with the sub-continent, as well as bagfuls of diamonds, rubies and other precious stones.
It was always known that there was treasure in the temple, though no one knew how much. According to locals, generations of Travancore maharajas who built the temple more than four centuries ago secreted immense riches within its thick underground stone vaults. The treasure revealed so far is estimated to be worth some £14 billion.
After Independence, all the major temples under the control and management of the erstwhile princely states came under the control of local boards but, under a special covenant, the custodianship of the Padmanabhaswamy temple continued to rest with the last ruler of Travancore. After his death in 1991, however, a constitutional court ruled that any treaties or covenants entered into by the former rulers of the princely states and the government of India were void.
Although the administration of the temple was assumed by the last maharaja's younger brother, there were some who questioned the legitimacy of the royal family's status as the controlling trustees of the temple. Sundararajan, a former policeman and an ardent devotee of Padmanabhaswamy (the principal temple deity, an avatar of Vishnu), allegedly decided to petition the courts because he feared that the trust under the control of the royal family was not competent to protect them. In 2009 Sundararajan appealed to the high court and later the Indian Supreme Court for an inventory of the temple's treasures to be prepared. In May this year, the Supreme Court appointed a seven-member panel to draw up the inventory and on June 27 the first of the vaults was opened.
Sundararajan's action sparked angry debate in India, with some predicting that it could invite the wrath of Lord Vishnu.
Last week the temple custodian, a scion of the royal family, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court to halt the opening of the last of the temple's six vaults on the grounds that "the sign of the serpent visible at the entrance indicates that it is not auspicious to open it". The court decided to defer the opening of the chamber, if on the more prosaic grounds of the need to provide better security for the riches already discovered.
Following the announcement of his death, Indian newspapers are reporting that some local people believe that Sundararajan brought the wrath of God upon himself.
TP Sundararajan was born in 1941 into the Brahmin caste. His father was a legal adviser to the Travancore royal family.
After joining the Indian Police Service in 1964 he served in the Intelligence Bureau of India for much of his career and also in the security team of the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Sundararajan gave up his career in the police when his father went blind and returned to the family home in the agraharam (Brahmin quarter) in Trivandrum to look after him. He would take his father daily to the temple, and soon he too became an ardent devotee of Padmanabhaswamy, visiting the temple five times a day and living on the nivedyam (food offered to the deity and then distributed to devotees). He set himself up as a lawyer, operating from a small office on the temple premises.
After he began his court action, Sundararajan received death threats from hard-line Hindus. Last week it was reported that the royal family of Travancore had initiated legal action to evict him from the temple complex due to alleged non-payment of rent.
Sundararajan had been ailing with a fever for several days before his death and his family dismissed suggestions that he had fallen victim to some sort of temple curse.
TP Sundararajan was unmarried.
TP Sundararajan - Telegraph
Vasudha Narayanan: The Real Riches of India's Vishnu Temple
The Real Riches of India's Vishnu Temple
Posted: 7/11/11 10:17 AM ET
One of the thousand names given to the Hindu God Vishnu is Sri-nidhi -- he whose treasure is the Goddess of Fortune. "Treasure" and "fortune" were words that were used to describe the recent discovery in a Vishnu temple at Thiruvananthapuram, in the state of Kerala, India, where a hoard worth more than $22 billion (give or take) was discovered in the vaults. The treasure reportedly includes hundreds of golden chairs, jars and jeweled crowns, thousands of precious gems, sacks full of gold coins, and an image of Vishnu studded with 1,000 diamonds. And that is just the beginning. It seems incredible that a wealth of this proportion lay in a place so central and well known without being looted.
While it is hard not to get distracted by $22 billion, or, as the news reports coyly suggest, a treasure probably worth several times that amount if we figure its antique value into the equation, there are other riches connected with the temple, the city and the local royal family.
A city that poets thought had walls of gold, a temple that devotees call heaven on earth, a deity said to transcend space and time and who yet graciously rules the city, and royal men and women who passionately promoted literature and the arts and styled themselves as "servants of [lord] Padmanabha" -- these form the cultural framework in which the treasure was kept in vaults recently opened by court order.
Vishnu is usually known by a local name in temples in south India, and in Thiruvanantapuram he is called Padma-nabha-swamy, or "the lord from whose navel emerges the lotus." The lotus in this context is an allusion to creation and the created universe. Vishnu, a name that means "the all pervasive one," reclines in this temple on the coils of his serpent-servant, called Ananta ("without end" or "infinite"). Thus, on one register -- and Hindu narratives and icons yield meanings on many registers -- the central icon worshiped in the temple gives a sense of a supreme being who is all-pervasive in space, reclining on the coils of infinite time (ananta). And it is from this sense of vastness and infinity, this name of the serpent-servant of Vishnu, that the city Thiruvanantapuram -- thiru (sacred) ananta (endless) puram (city) -- gets its name.
Poets simply referred to the temple-town as Ananta-puram or the "Endless City." And certainly the town is old; it seems to have been a flourishing metropolis with the proverbial pavements of gold more than a thousand years ago. Nammalvar, a Tamil poet who lived around the ninth century, describes it as one filled with spiritual and material riches. The city is "surrounded by the vast ocean on one side, fragrant gardens and fertile paddy fields on the other," he says.
"The Wondrous One abides in Ananta-puram," Nammalvar sings, "here the flowers bloom in the gardens and majestic mansions tower like mountains." It is a fabulously prosperous city. But more important, says Nammalvar, if one says even one of Vishnu's thousand names in this city, it has the power of all thousand and one will know no grief. This, he declares, "is a city of the divine ones" (Tiruvaymoli 10.2.2 and 4).
The central icon of Vishnu-Padmanabha is 18 feet long, and portrays him as reclining on the coils of infinity. One can see the deity enshrined here through three doorways. In "Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras," Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University, has an enthralling description of her recognition of divinity in this temple: "Seeing the triptych in the temple in Trivandrum with its three glimpses of a God larger than one could fully comprehend, was a moment of recognition for me, and the experience of God's presence there was describable only as worship. ... It was a moment of total presence..."
The spiritual appeal of the temple has endured through the centuries, and thousands of pilgrims come to this temple every year.
The Hindu temple here, like those in many parts of the world, seems to have undergone major renovation whenever royal patronage willed it, and the last major rebuilding was in the 18th century. Over the last two millennia, several ruling families -- kings and queens -- have held power over the areas encompassed by the city of Thiruvananthapuram today. The city itself became the capital of the state called Travancore by the British. Originally occupying a large territory, "it was gradually reduced to the present Travancore with its area of 6653 and ½ miles" says P. Shungoonny Menon in his "A History of Travancore from Earliest Times in 1878," with considerable exactitude and regret.
The patriarch who established the last major dynasty, and in whose time matrilineal traditions became significant, was Anizham Thirunal Maharajah Marthanda Varma, who reigned from 1729 to 1758. This dynasty includes well known musician-monarchs like Swathi Thirunal (reigned 1829-1846) as well as regent queens who held power for several years. Swathi Thirunal's mother and maternal aunt were regents for almost 20 years before he assumed power.
A brilliant composer and musician, and well versed in several Indian languages and English and Persian, Swathi Thirunal did not just extend royal patronage to the arts; he himself was a scholar and an artist. His personality, learning and music have been made popular by singers and dancers; movies and websites glorify him. Interested in astronomy, he started an observatory. He also established a zoo, a museum, a public library and a manuscript library. His accomplishments in educational and legal reforms, government regulations and work in the arts are legion. Other family members established medical facilities and hospitals.
Also well known in the arts was Swathi Thirunal's predecessor, Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma (1758-1798), a renowned expert in classical music and dance, and a composer of several dance-dramas in the Kathakali form. Ravi Varma (1848-1906), a member of the royal family, is one of the best known painters in India, and his portrayals of Hindu gods and goddesses have become the way in which generations of Indians have imagined and visualized divinity.
Members of the Travancore royal family are popularly known by the first two names which, taken together, serve as an astrological indicator referring specifically to a star/asterism connected to the exact moment when they were born. Thus, the name of the last "reigning" monarch was Chithira Thirunal (1912-1991), which literally translates as "the sacred day (thirunal) when the moon was near the star Chitra (Spica/Virgo)."
However, the rulers are also famously known as Sri Padmanabha dasa or Padmanabha sevini -- "the servant of Lord Padmanabha." Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma in the 18th century made his kingdom over to the deity in the Padmanabhaswamy temple, who was considered the "real" monarch -- the earthly rulers held power as his servant. Colonel J. Munro, the British Resident at Thiruvananthapuram (which, along with its environs was known then as the Travancore state), writes to the British Governor at Fort St. George, Madras in 1814, recommending that Swathi Thirunal's aunt be named the Regent, and that her titles be "Padmoonaben Seveny ... Raja Rajeswary Rannee Parvidy Baee." This is an anglicized version of Padmanabha sevini ... Raja Rajeswari Rani or "the servant of [Lord] Padmanabha ... queen of queens, Parvathi Bayi."
The Rev. Samuel Mateer of the London Missionary Society, in his "Native Life in Travancore" (1883: 120) reinforces the overlordship of Lord Padmanabha: "[T]he whole kingdom being bestowed by Rajah Martandah Vurmah, on this deity, in 1750, in perpetual endowment, the crown can only be received from him through the Brahmans," he says. "[The new king] attends the temple for his instructions, and allowances of food and clothing, and for investment with office, and with the first of his official titles, Sree Patmanabha Dausa, 'the servant, or slave of the holy Patmanabhan.'" Mateer tells us that the king ceremonially receives from the deity an allowance for administering the kingdom as his tenant and viceregent.
Mateer has the expected laments on Hinduism ("In the little kingdom of Travancore alone, there are a million heathen idolaters, living without hope and living without God in the world"), but goes on to describe the state, people and customs of Travancore in considerable detail in several books. In one of them, there is a hint of the cellars and vaults of treasure recently in the limelight. As a European and a Christian, he could not, of course, enter the temple, so he reports second hand: "It is said there is a deep well inside the temple, into which immense riches are thrown year by year; and in another place, in a hollow covered by a stone, a great golden lamp, which was lit over a 120 years ago, and still continues burning." ("The Land of Charity: A Descriptive History of Travancore and its People," 1870: 163)
There are no official Maharajas or ruling kings today. In the years following Independence in 1947, the rulers signed the instrument of accession, and the kingdoms became part of India. Uthradom Thirunal ("he who is born on the sacred day when the moon was near the Uthradom or Sigma Sagittarii") became the head of the Royal House of Travancore when his older brother died in 1991. He is, of course, Padmanabha dasa, the servant of Sri Padmanabha, but, as his official biography states, he is also the "Supreme Guardian of the Sri Padmanabhaswami Temple."
Uthradom Thirunal was about 9 years old when the temple vaults that contained the treasure were last opened. This happened Dec. 6, 1931, at a time deemed auspicious, and according to media reports and travelogues appearing after, floodlights, torches and fans were used for the expedition, along with ambulances waiting outside for emergencies. And yes, much of the treasure "discovered" recently was reported in the newspaper The Hindu in 1931, and two years later in 1933, by Emily Gilchrist Hatch, in her book, "Travancore: A guide book for the visitor." Perhaps even more mind-boggling than the extent of the treasure is that despite the knowledge of its existence, it was not appropriated by the royal family.
Does Uthradom Thirunal, the "Servant of Padmanabha" and the "Supreme Guardian of the Sri Padmanabhaswami Temple" also become the guardian of its billions? His senior counsel, K.K. Venugopal, went on record in the Kerala High Court on July 7, 2011, that neither the head of the Travancore royal family nor any other family member would make any claim on the treasure. "The royal family is not claiming any ownership. No part of the property belongs to any member of the family. The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple is a public temple and they are only trustees."
In the Indian judicial system, as an Indian Supreme Court lawyer has observed in the past, deities are considered to be "legal entities who could have a legal representation in courts through trustees or an in-charge of the temple in which they are worshipped." Further, legal experts agree that the deity resident in a temple is a "juristic entity," and it has "juridical status" with power to sue and be sued. With so many people who claim to be stake-holders and the slow moving judicial system in India, it is likely that the deity who reclines on the Endless Ananta will probably be involved for the foreseeable future, at least, in legal disputes.
Nammalvar promised endless fame for those who worshiped the deity in Anantapuram. The royal servants of Padmanabha have in their times, through their visionary contribution to education, scholarship and the arts, encouraged a culture that promoted literacy and intellectual pluralism in multiple registers. And those are endless riches worth bragging about in the Endless City.
Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, and Director, Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra) at the University of Florida. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion.
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it is quite possible, even very likely, that TP sundararajan was influenced and used, (unwittingly perhaps, but could be knowingly also) by the pro-sonia-congress part of the government (which is anti-hindu, and exists at both state and national levels in kerala), to file the lawsuit, to create an opening for the govt to step in. it is likely to be the first step for eventual govt take-over, which needs managing of people's perceptions to be directed against the royal family, and, that's what the thrust of the power elite has been so far in the unfolding of the story, the people's realization and reaction backlash correctly understanding this as an anti-hindu step has surprised those vested powers.
Subject - The riches found in the vaults of Thiruvananthapuram's centuries-old Padmanabhaswamy temple have suddenly become the focus of envy and covetous glances all around. Since such riches are rare in any community or group, people are already debating what should be done with it.
From: atcptrivedi@gmail.com;
Lord Vishnu is Guardian of the creation resting on the 'Sheshnag' /The sign of snake hood is a symbolic expression for the support/ foundation
It is our great cultural heritage, and we should honour it. The treasury belongs to Lord - Bhagwaan Vishnu, It should remain at Tiruanantpuram as it is, and it should be declared as National heritage.
It will give new dimension to our cultural unity.
Lord Vishnu resting on the 'Sheshnag' as a guardian of the creation symbolically. In the same fashion on the 'B' door of the treasury chamber, on iron wall a copper tablet with inscription has been traced, which signify that the wall and door 'B' may be related with foundation of the temple? The sign of snake hood is a symbolic expression for the support. The 'B' may have ancient heritage of wealth of Lord 'Vishnu' known as 'Kuber' The treasure trove of Lord Vishnu should be protected from the so called secularists.
The symbol of Snake with hood may be a tantrik symbol, the caution should be also, according to the Tankrik system.
The warning on the copper plate is a warning for the unauthorized persons, who can reach up to this gate, and for their greediness, they may try to destroy the 'B' chamber door. Hence the warning has been given directly for disaster, if door is open? The Snake hood is symbol for support or the foundation.
The Govt. should take caution in opening the gate, before any effort to open the gate a underground photography by satellite is needed.
The huge treasure amount of jewels and Gold is a treasury of lord Visnu, In the honor of Lord Visnu-the Guardian, the 'B' cell chamber can be left as it is, because only the name of this treasury is sufficient to guard the country from poverty, without spending physical money. It is our heritage.
C.P.Trivedi
From: dcchaturvedico@rediffmail.com
India is a Hindu-Dominated Country, Hindu population is more than 85%.
Hindus are morereligiousand devoted to theirreligionthan christians and muslims.
Hindus are more wealthy, Among first fifty Richest Indians, Only one is Muslim.
In the Indian culture the Lord Vishnu is one of the great Gods besides Shiva. They have given two schools of thoughts 'Shaiv and Vaishnav'
The lord Shiva has been considered as creator and sustainer of the creation, and Lord Vishnu is the guardian of the creation.
They have been personified as 'Purusha and Vishnu' in the Vedas and in the post Vedic era they have been personified with myths in series in 'Puranas'.
In this way the history goes back to Vedic culture.
The lord Vishnu has been originally conceived as the Source of visible light, he has been personified with swiftly moving luminary which with vast strides traverses the three world( the Sun, Atmosphere and the Earth) He has taken three steps for the benefit of the man- living-beings.
His two steps or spaces are visible, but the third or highest step is beyond the flight of birds or mortal ken Rig-Veda 1-155-5
The highest place of Vishnu is regarded as identical with the highest place of, for Vishnu guards the highest, the third place of Agni Rig-Veda 10-1-3 and Agni with loftiest station of Vishnu guards the mysterious cows (the living-beings, who acts as food for each other)
Symbolically the presence of ozone layer in the middle atmosphere has been expressed, which guard the earth from toxic ultraviolet rays, it has given the ways for the entry of visible light into the atmosphere of the earth, and it has initiated the process of photosynthesis. Accordingly, the Vishnu has been described as the guardian of the creation.
In Vishnu's highest step—he is our kinsman:
Of mighty stride—there is a spring of nectar.
His highest step is in the heaven, where the gods dwell (the gods- fundamental particles) and the fathers (ionization of the fundamental particles in the ionosphere) dwell.
It has been expressed symbolically.
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From: tkumar_kumar@yahoo.co.uk;
Hindus in India do not know how much Hindu Kingdoms have suffered during Mogul and especially during British rule. Moguls made the Kingdoms pay 65% of their annual income as Jakat, which the British reduced it to 60%. The ultimate result was Maharajas could not look after the population and the majority of the people remained poverty stricken for decades. During this time their children could not be educated as Hindu schools were systematically destroyed under Macaulay's 'Christian schools only' policy. Even today, Christian institutions are receiving billions of dollars from U.S., U.K., Rome and many others as Charity and is being used to destroy Hinduism in India. I was told, in Kerala even highly educated cannot get Government jobs and have to seek jobs outside and abroad.
The temple property belongs to the Royal Family and its people. I suggest Hindus should insist their treasure be used for rebuilding lost institutions, welfare and land cultivation lost during 200 years of deceitful British Raj.
Tkumar.
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