The chronicle
The garland of historical tales of the Hill of Venkata — to Tirupati what the Kōyil Oḻugu is to Srirangam. Ananthalvan writes as an eyewitness of Ramanuja’s century.
S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, editing the work for the Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanam in 1937, was careful. The book does not run from the origin of the shrine to the writer’s own day. It records the incidents that fixed the temple’s identity in the years around 1050–1150: the Śaiva claim that the south-bank image was Skanda, Ramanuja’s answer from Veda and Purāṇa, the judgement of Yādava Rāja, and the arrangements of worship that followed, all under the Acharya’s word.
Manuscripts were not to be found in Madras. Aiyangar published from a rare Telugu edition said to have had the learning of MM. Srirangacharya of Tirupati. The work names an Anantārya as compiler. Notwithstanding the uncertainty of the colophon, Aiyangar found the matter too valuable to lose while writing his own history of the shrine, and recommended it to the Devasthanam series.
For Ananthalvan the book is also bhakti. He had stood in the assembly. He had seen the Hill declared Viṣṇu’s, the tank declared the king of tīrthas, the image declared Srinivasa, and Vaikhānasa rite restored. Flower service was one half of his kainkarya. This was the other.
Seven stabakas
I
The contestants said the deity on the south bank of Svāmi Puṣkariṇī was Skanda: the name Svāmi as in Kumārasvāmi, matted locks, nāga ornaments, and a Vāmana Purāṇa account of Skanda’s penance after slaying Tāraka. They asked that worship follow Śaiva āgamas. Yādava Rāja, knowing long Vaikhānasa practice, would not decide without a śāstra debate. The local Vaiṣṇavas sent to Ramanuja at Srirangam; he came at once.
II
Ramanuja: Svāmi here means lordship — the tank that is king of tīrthas, so named in Vāmana, Varāha, Padma, Mārkaṇḍeya, and the Veṅkaṭeśa Sahasranāmāvalī. Sarasvatī, cursed by Pulastya, became this still tank. Skanda Purāṇa explains the name by the presence of Varāha and Srinivasa on its banks. Kumāra’s own tīrtha is Kumāradhārā, not this lake.
III
The deity has one face and four arms; Skanda at birth had two arms, and six faces when nursed by the Kṛttikās. The image bears Śrīvatsa, Lakṣmī’s seat. The right hand grants boons; the left on the thigh marks the limit of the soul’s suffering. Purāṇas place Srinivasa on the south bank and Varāha on the west; Skanda comes down from Kumāradhārikā daily to bathe and worship Him. To call the worshipped the worshipper, Ramanuja said, is to call a firefly the sun. Even the Ṛg Veda (eighth aṣṭaka) is read of this Hill as Viṣṇu’s.
IV–VII
The remaining stabakas record the settlement Yādava Rāja ordered on Ramanuja’s word, and the further arrangements made in the Acharya’s lifetime: restoration of Vaikhānasa worship, return of śaṅkha and cakra (once given to Toṇḍaimān), organisation of kainkarya, and — with Periṇ Tirumalai Nambi and Ananthalvan — the Pedda Jeeyangar Mutt. The work does not continue past that century. Ananthalvan writes as eyewitness.
Before Srinivasa appeared, Brahma, Rudra, and ṛṣis were already in penance on the Hill. To single out Skanda as the sanctifier, Ramanuja said, would be madness. The same Vāmana Purāṇa that the Śaivas quoted calls Veṅkaṭācala a Viṣṇu-kṣetra on the south bank of the tank. Varāha, Padma, Garuḍa, Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas agree. The Hill is the krīḍā-parvata of Vaikuṇṭha, brought down by Garuḍa — hence Vaikuṇṭhagiri, Garuḍācala. Vaidika Brahmans still name it Varāha-kṣetra in śrauta and smārta rite. The beginningless Veda itself, Ṛg Veda eighth aṣṭaka, speaks of this Hill as Viṣṇu’s.
On the image: Skanda who came to do penance cannot be the object of that penance. He is said in Vāmana Purāṇa 24.5 to come down daily from Kumāradhārikā, bathe in Svāmi Puṣkariṇī, and worship Srinivasa — a story Śiva tells Pārvatī. Mahādeva himself, asking for a residence on the Hill, is directed to the foot. Śrīvatsa on the right chest settles the rest.
Yādava Rāja accepted the proof. What remained was to restore the weapons and the Vaikhānasa order, and to keep the shrine as Ramanuja had argued it: the Hill of Viṣṇu, the tank of the Lord, the image of Srinivasa. Ananthalvan’s nandavanam, the Pedda Jeeyangar Mutt, and the Ramanuja vigraha on the left of the sanctum are the living clauses of that settlement.