Tirumala - The Kaliyuga Vaikuntam

Foreword A normal day, more than 60,000 pilgrims visit the Sri Venkateshwara temple at Tirumala. On weekends, this goes up to over 80,000 and on special days such as Vaikunta Ekadashi and Garuda Seva, the count can zoom up to as many as 2,00,000 people. Sri Venkateshwara or Srinivasa is the refuge for the believer in Kaliyuga and His abode is Vaikuntam. Hence the description of Tirumala as Kaliyuga Vaikuntam.

In this special. volume brought out to coincide with the annual. Brahmotsavam of the Lord of the Seven Hills, we have put together a set of very interesting articles on the temple and its activities enriching them with some fabulous pictures of the deity. The Asthana Vidwan of Srirangam Srimad Andavan Ashramam, Sri. V.S. Karunakarachariar has specially penned a set of verses in Sanskrit that describe the benefits of having darshan during the Brahmotsavam.

A piece on the Srinivasa Avatar explores the story behind the divine incarnation on Earth and another one describes the significance of the self-manifested idol in Tirumala. Can a volume on the rich temple be complete without a deep-dive into its finances? We look at the various sources of the income of the Lord and His assets. At last count, He owned 8.637 tons of gold, all of it offered by devotees in the Hindu. His gold holdings amount to almost 2% of the sovereign gold holdings of India.

Did you know that the family which descends from Tirumala Nimbi, who lived in the 10th century, still fetches water for the Aradhana of the Lord every morning? How does the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam manage to serve free food to 1.4 lakh pilgrims daily and how is it financed? Devotees drop land and property deeds in the Hindi as their offering to the Lord. How does the TTD manage these? Read about all this and more in this volume.

We do hope you enjoy this book, which, we believe, is a collector's item.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages