Sri Venkateswara Temple, Tirumala (Tirupati)

The shrine on Venkatadri, the seventh peak of the Seshachalam hills, is of great antiquity. The Alvar poet-saints of the Tamil Vaishnava tradition sang of the Lord of Venkatam, and the temple is counted among the 108 Divya Desams. Its oldest dated records are stone inscriptions: the temple carries about 640 of them, in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit. One of the best known records a gift by the Pallava queen Samavai (also called Perundevi), who presented a silver image of Bhoga Srinivasa and endowed land for festivals. Historians usually date this record to 966 CE; TTD's own temple history gives 614 CE.

Pallava, Chola and Pandya rulers, the Yadavarayas and later the Reddi chiefs all supported the shrine. According to TTD's history, the walls of the sanctum and the vimana were built between 1244 and 1250 CE, and the work of raising the main entrance tower (Mahadwaram) began in the 13th century. The Sri Vaishnava teacher Ramanujacharya (traditionally 1017–1137 CE) is said to have visited Tirumala three times and to have put the temple's rituals in order according to the Vaikhanasa Agama, a system still followed. TTD also records that during the invasions of the 14th century (1320–1369), the processional images of Sri Ranganatha were brought from Srirangam to Tirumala for safekeeping.

The temple's greatest growth came under the Vijayanagara Empire, whose rulers gave much of its land, jewels and wealth. TTD's history credits Saluva Narasimha Raya with four pavilions in the Sampangi Pradakshinam (1470) and the Tirumalaraya Mandapam, and the minister Mallanna with the Ghanta Mandapam (1461). Emperor Krishnadevaraya visited several times; on 2 January 1517 he installed copper statues of himself and his queens Tirumala Devi and Chinna Devi, which still stand near the entrance, and he is credited with gilding the roof of the Ananda Nilayam. Achyuta Raya and the later Aravidu kings of Chandragiri continued the gifts.

The 15th-century poet-saint Annamacharya of Tallapaka composed songs to Venkateswara by the thousand; tradition credits him with over 32,000 sankirtanas, and roughly 11,000 have survived on copper plates kept in a strong room at the temple, completed around 1525–30. After Vijayanagara declined, the temple passed under the Golconda Sultanate, the Nawabs of the Carnatic and, from 1801, the East India Company. In 1843 the Company handed its management to the Mahants of the Hathiramji Math, who ran it for ninety years.

In 1933 the Madras government set up the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) to administer the temple and its institutions, and the TTD laws were revised several times after Independence. Today TTD runs not only the hill temple but also the Padmavathi temple at Tiruchanur, several temples in Tirupati, pilgrim amenities, free meals (annaprasadam), hospitals, schools and Vedic institutions. Recent figures put annual visitors at around two crore (20 million) or more.

The temple is built in the Dravida style of South India, but its form is shaped by centuries of additions rather than one plan. Three concentric enclosures surround the sanctum. Pilgrims enter through the Mahadwaram, the main eastern gateway, whose gopuram rises about 50 feet (15 m), and come into the outer circumambulatory path, the Sampangi Pradakshinam, named after the champak flowers once grown there. Around it stand pillared halls of the Vijayanagara period: the Krishnadevaraya Mandapam with the royal statues, the Ranganayaka Mandapam (where the Srirangam images are said to have been kept), the Tirumalaraya Mandapam and the Addala (mirror) Mandapam.

The second enclosure is entered through the Vendi Vakili (silver gateway), whose doors were silver-plated in 1929, and leads to the Vimana Pradakshinam around the main shrine. Before the shrine rises the gold-covered Dhwajasthambham (flagstaff) in its twenty-pillared pavilion, with the bali peetham beside it. The Bangaru Vakili (golden doorway), its frame gilded and flanked by the guardians Jaya and Vijaya, opens through the Snapana and Ramula Meda mandapams into the garbhagriha.

The sanctum, about 12 feet square, faces east and holds the standing image of Venkateswara, about 8 feet high, with four arms: the upper hands hold the conch and discus, the lower right hand is in the gesture of granting boons (varada) and the lower left rests on the hip (kati). Lakshmi is carried on his chest. Above rises the Ananda Nilayam, a three-tiered vimana entirely sheathed in gilded copper and crowned by a golden kalasha; TTD notes 64 deity figures on it. In the Dravida tradition, the vimana over the sanctum, rather than the gateway, is the sacred heart of the temple.

Around the main shrine are sub-shrines for Yoga Narasimha (built about 1330–1360 according to TTD), Varadaraja and Vishvaksena, the Potu (sacred kitchen) where the prasadam is prepared, and the counting halls for hundi offerings. North of the temple lies the Swami Pushkarini, a sacred tank of more than 1.5 acres.