Ambalappuzha: The Temple That Lost a Chess Game and Has Been Paying Ever Since

The katha is the most famous thing about this temple, and it is one of the best stories in Indian tradition because it is also a mathematics problem.

As it is told:

• The king of the region, of the Chembakassery line, was a keen player of chess
• A sage arrived and challenged him to a game. The sage was Krishna in disguise
• The king asked what the visitor wanted as a stake
• The sage asked for grains of rice, counted on the chessboard. One grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and doubling on every square to the sixty fourth
• The king thought this a modest request and agreed
• He lost the game

What happened when they started counting:

• The first row was trivial. A few dozen grains
• By the twentieth square it was more than a million grains
• By the fortieth it was a granary
• By the sixty fourth the total exceeds eighteen quintillion grains, which is more rice than has ever been grown
• The king could not pay

How it was settled:

• Krishna revealed himself
• The king was told he could pay the debt over time
• The temple would serve palpayasam to devotees, daily, until the debt was cleared
• It is still being served

The mathematics. The total is two to the sixty fourth power minus one, and it is the standard illustration of exponential growth. The same problem appears in Persian and Arabic tradition and in European sources, usually with a king, a chessboard and an inventor.

That it appears at Ambalappuzha attached to Krishna, and that a temple kitchen has been running for centuries as the settlement, is a rather wonderful piece of localisation. Somebody took an abstract mathematical parable and turned it into a standing arrangement with a daily obligation.

The chessboard problem has survived across cultures for a thousand years, and it is worth asking why.

What it demonstrates:

• Human beings are very bad at exponential growth. We estimate it linearly, and we are wrong by an enormous margin every time
• The doubling looks harmless for the first half of the board and becomes absurd in the second half
• The insight cannot be had by thinking harder about the early squares. You have to run it out

Where the same failure shows up:

• Compound interest, which is the reason debt traps work and the reason long term saving works
• Epidemics, where a low case count doubling on a short interval is not a small problem
• Population and resource projections
• Anything that grows as a percentage of itself

What the story adds to the mathematics. It puts the problem in a setting where the loser is a king, which is the point.

• The king is not stupid. He is powerful, competent and used to being able to pay for things
• His error is a failure of imagination, not of arithmetic. He did not run the numbers because the request sounded small
• Anyone in his position would have agreed

The Indian versions of the parable. Chess itself is generally traced to India, through chaturanga, and moves west through Persia and the Arab world into Europe. It is fitting that the most famous problem about a chessboard travelled with it.

The Ambalappuzha version's contribution is the ending. In most tellings the story stops at the moment of realisation, with the king humiliated or the inventor executed depending on the version.

Here the debt is not cancelled and the king is not punished. It is restructured. The obligation stays real and gets paid down forever in daily instalments of milk pudding, which is a much more Indian resolution than either humiliation or forgiveness.

Ambalappuzha is the birthplace of one of Kerala's distinctive performing arts, and the story of how it began is worth telling.

Kunchan Nambiar, in the eighteenth century, was an accompanist at the temple. He played the mizhavu, the large drum used in Chakyar Koothu, the traditional solo narrative performance.

What happened:

• During a performance, Nambiar fell asleep at his drum
• The Chakyar, the performer, mocked him publicly for it in the course of the performance, which the form permits
• Nambiar was humiliated
• By the next day he had created a new performance form, Ottamthullal, and performed it at the temple
• The audience left the Koothu and came to watch

What Ottamthullal is:

• A solo performance, with the performer in costume and makeup, singing and dancing while narrating
• In Malayalam, not Sanskrit, and in a register anybody could follow
• Fast, direct and above all satirical
• Its targets were the powerful, the pompous, the corrupt and the socially pretentious, and Nambiar's verses are still quoted for their bite

Why this matters. Kerala's classical arts, Koodiyattam and Chakyar Koothu, were performed inside temple theatres, in Sanskrit, for audiences who could follow them.

Ottamthullal was a vernacular form, aimed at everybody, and its content was social criticism. It was created in a day by a man who had been humiliated, and it worked because it was funnier and more accessible than what it displaced.

What Nambiar left. His compositions are among the most widely known Malayalam verses, and Ottamthullal is still performed. The tradition of using it for satire on contemporary matters has continued.

The episode is remembered at the temple, and it is one of the better origin stories in Indian performance, because it is entirely about somebody being publicly embarrassed and responding by inventing something better.

Two further associations belong to Ambalappuzha and are worth knowing.

The Guruvayur image:

• Tradition holds that during a period of danger in the eighteenth century, when campaigns were moving through the region, the image from Guruvayur was brought to Ambalappuzha for safekeeping
• It remained here for a period before returning
• The two temples have a recognised relationship as a result

What that tells you about how temples operated. Images were moved when threatened, and this was normal practice rather than an exception.

Across India there are shrines whose deities spent periods elsewhere, hidden, buried or in the keeping of another temple. Charbhuja at Garhbor was concealed in water. Numerous Kerala and Tamil temples moved images during the campaigns of the eighteenth century.

The network of temples that would take in another temple's deity in an emergency is not something anyone wrote down as a system, but it clearly existed.

Velakali:

• A martial performance associated with this temple, performed by men in traditional warrior costume with sword and shield
• Performed to percussion, in formations, in the temple grounds and at the tank
• It is a temple art with a military origin, and the association is with the Nair martial tradition of the region
• It is performed at the temple's festivals

Why martial arts and temples go together in Kerala. Kalaripayattu, the martial tradition of Kerala, was practised in kalaris that had shrines in them, and the connection between combat training, temple service and ritual is old.

The same pattern appears in Karnataka with the garodis of Koti and Chennaya, in Tamil Nadu with silambam, and across India wherever communities had both a martial obligation and a temple.

A temple that fed people, staged satire and drilled swordsmen in its own courtyard was, in its time, doing about as much as a public institution can.

Getting there

• Ambalappuzha, Alappuzha district, Kerala
• About 14 km from Alappuzha town and roughly 60 km from Kochi
• Ambalappuzha has a railway station on the Ernakulam to Kollam line
• Kochi has the nearest airport
• Buses run frequently along the coastal road

Timings

• The temple opens very early, before dawn, and has morning and evening sessions with a long midday closure. Check locally
• The palpayasam is offered at a particular time and is distributed after. Ask about the timing on the day, since it runs out

When to go

• October to February for the most comfortable weather
• Ambalappuzha Aarattu, the temple's festival, in the Malayalam month of Meenam, generally March or April
• Janmashtami, given the deity
• Early morning, which is when Kerala temples are at their best

The palpayasam

• It is available at the temple and is the reason many people come
• Devotees also sponsor it as an offering, which can be arranged at the temple office
• Go early if you want it. It is finite

Dress and conduct

• Kerala temple rules apply. Men must remove upper garments and wear a mundu, and trousers and shirts are not permitted inside
• Women should wear a sari, set mundu or salwar
• Non Hindus are not permitted inside many Kerala temples, and the rule is applied. Check before travelling if it affects your party
• Photography inside is not permitted
• Leave footwear and phones at the counters

Combining the visit

• Alappuzha for the backwaters, houseboats and the canals
• The Nehru Trophy snake boat race at Punnamada, held in August, if the timing falls
• Kumarakom across the lake
• Kollam and the southern backwaters
• Aranmula, with its own boat race and Parthasarathy temple, is within reach

On the backwaters generally. Alappuzha is the centre of the houseboat industry, and it is worth knowing that the boats have had a real environmental effect on the lake system through sewage and fuel.

If you take one, choose an operator with proper waste handling, and consider a day trip rather than an overnight, or a smaller country boat, which sees more and costs the lake less.

A closing thought. A temple that has been running a kitchen for several hundred years because a king once misjudged a doubling sequence is a very good argument for teaching children exponentials early.