​The Padmanabhasvamy Temple as Depicted in an Early Maṇipravāḷam Text and in the Works of Svāti Tirunāḷ

The Padmanābhasvāmi Temple in Tiruvananthapuram, one of the 108 sacred divyadeśas of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition in Malaināṭu (Kerala), has been celebrated since the time of Nammāḻvār in the ninth century CE, who composed a hymn in praise of Lord Padmanābha. This lecture will explore the temple’s depiction in two key sources: the early fourteenth-century Maṇipravāḷam text, Anantapuravarṇanam, and the works of the nineteenth-century ruler of Travancore, Svāti Tirunāḷ. The Anantapuravarṇanam offers a detailed account of the temple's sacred structures, festivals, and surrounding shrines, including its tīrthas and adjacent Vedic institutions, through a visualized, poetic circumambulation of its premises.

Svāti Tirunāḷ was a prolific composer who vividly portrayed the temple in his works. His oeuvre includes over three hundred kṛtis (in Sanskrit, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi) and literary works such as the Utsavaprabhandha, which describes the bi-annual festivals, and the Bhaktimañjarī, in which he depicts the different incarnations of Viṣṇu in a picturesque manner. He is also credited with regularizing these festivals, and the minutely precise ritual procedures he established are strictly followed to this day. This presentation will analyze the depiction of the temple and its surroundings in both the Anantapuravarṇanam and compositions of Svāti Tirunāḷ.

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