Tirupathi Temple's Golden Plans

TIRUMALA, ANDRHRA PRADESH, INDIA, March 14, 2009: The long-anticipated project of providing gold plating to the famous hill temple of Lord Venkateswara began on a grand note on an auspicious hour Friday, as temple priests conducted special pujas to the golden Lakshmi image near the main sanctum.

The project, which will convert the entire temple and its precincts into a golden complex, is expected to require at least 100 kilos of gold. The management decided to fund the project by inviting donations from philanthropists rather than burdening the TTD coffers. The response from devotees has been overwhelming. Over 20kg of gold were received just on October 1, 2008, the day of the announcement. To date, according to temple sources, the management has received over 60kg of gold and hundreds of thousands of rupees.

TTD Chairman D. K. Audikesavulu said precautions have been initiated to preserve the inscriptions on the temple walls. Earlier, the temple management digitized the inscriptions. Audikesavulu was confident that the project would be completed within 12 months. When the outer wall is covered with gold sheets, it will also cover up ancient inscriptions found on the wall. To save the centuries old inscriptions, TTD and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) are planning to preserve the inscriptions and digitize it and upload on a website.

Sadhu Subrahmanya Sastry, the TTD’s former epigraphist-cum-archaeologist, copied 1,150 of the inscriptions in 1922 making sketches. These included 640 inscriptions in the area that will be covered up. But the ASI’s Mysore-based epigraphy wing, equipped to deal with such work, recently completed taking estampages of the Tamil, Telugu and Kannada inscriptions. This was done by pasting litho paper on the wet wall and running rollers over it after spreading an adhesive paste made of lamp black and Indian ink.

While most of the inscriptions copied from the ‘Jagati’, ‘Kumudam’ and ‘Patti’ (floor level) areas of the northern wall pertain to the Vijayanagara era (13th century) including from the Sangama, Saluva, Thuluva and Araveedu dynasties, a few relate to the Chola, Pandya and Pallava periods.

Source: The Hindu