Melukote: Ramanuja's Hill and the Crown Nobody Looks At

The reason Melukote is what it is comes down to one person's stay, and it is worth knowing what he did here.

Ramanuja, in outline:

• The founder of Vishishtadvaita, qualified non dualism, one of the three great Vedanta schools alongside Shankara's Advaita and Madhva's Dvaita
• His position, in the shortest possible form, is that the world and individual souls are real and are the body of Brahman, not an illusion over it
• He was the organising figure of Sri Vaishnavism, the tradition centred on Vishnu with Sri, Lakshmi, as inseparable
• He is placed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and is traditionally said to have lived to a very great age

Why he came to Melukote. Tradition holds that he left Srirangam under pressure from a Chola ruler hostile to his tradition, and spent around twelve years in the Hoysala country, of which Melukote was the centre.

What he did while here:

• He reorganised the temple, its administration, its ritual calendar and its service structure, in a form that persisted
• He is credited with the conversion of the Hoysala ruler Bittideva, who took the name Vishnuvardhana, in a story traditionally connected with the healing of his daughter
• He established the arrangement by which the temple's affairs were run, an area in which he was, by all accounts, an exceptionally capable administrator

That last point deserves emphasis. Ramanuja is remembered as a philosopher, and the philosophy is genuinely important. But what changed things on the ground was that he was extremely good at institutions, and Melukote is where the evidence of that survives most clearly.

The single most consequential thing Ramanuja is said to have done at Melukote concerns who was allowed inside the temple.

What the tradition records:

• Ramanuja arranged for members of communities excluded from temple entry to have access to the temple on specified days during the festival
• He is said to have given them the name Tirukulattar, meaning those of the sacred lineage
• The arrangement was made a part of the temple's ritual order, not an exception to it
• Traditions connected with this arrangement have continued at Melukote

Why this was significant. Temple entry was not a minor matter of etiquette. Access to the temple was access to the central public institution of a locality, and exclusion from it was one of the most visible and most enforced parts of the caste order.

A senior religious figure formally building access into a major temple's own calendar, in the twelfth century, was doing something with real consequences.

How to think about it honestly. This deserves neither dismissal nor exaggeration.

• It was limited, being tied to particular days and particular arrangements rather than being general access
• It did not end exclusion at Melukote or anywhere else, and the broader struggle over temple entry ran for another eight hundred years, into the reform movements and legislation of the twentieth century
• It was nonetheless real, it was made structural rather than charitable, and it was done by someone with the standing to make it stick

The wider pattern in Sri Vaishnavism. Ramanuja's tradition placed unusual weight on the Alvars, the Tamil poet saints, who came from a range of communities including Tiruppan Alvar, remembered as belonging to an excluded community, and Andal, a woman.

A tradition whose canonical poetry was written by such a range was always going to sit awkwardly with strict exclusion, and Melukote is where that tension produced an institutional answer.

One of the most remarkable traditions at Melukote concerns a shrine to a Muslim woman inside a Sri Vaishnava temple.

The katha, as it is told:

• The temple's utsava murti, the processional image, had been taken away to Delhi
• Ramanuja travelled there to recover it
• At the Sultan's court he found the image in the possession of the Sultan's daughter, who had become deeply attached to it and kept it with her
• Ramanuja called to the image and it came to him, and he brought it back to Melukote
• The young woman followed, unable to be parted from it, and reached Melukote
• She is enshrined in the temple as Bibi Nachiyar, also called Tulukka Nachiyar, and receives worship

How the temple treats her. She is not a footnote. She has a shrine, she is included in the temple's observances, and offerings connected with her are made in forms that acknowledge her background.

What this record actually is. It is a tradition, preserved in a major temple, that its own processional deity was loved by a Muslim woman and that she was given a place in the shrine for it.

The Melukote case is not unique. Similar traditions exist at other south Indian temples, including at Srirangam, and the figure of the Tulukka Nachiyar appears in more than one place.

Why it is worth knowing. The religious history of India is usually narrated as a sequence of conflicts, and there is no shortage of material for that. This is a shrine that has, for centuries, told a story about someone from the other side of that conflict who loved the deity, and has kept a place for her in the sanctum's own arrangements.

Both kinds of story are true. A tradition that preserved this one for eight hundred years thought it was worth preserving, and that judgement is itself a piece of evidence.

The festival Melukote is best known for is the Vairamudi Brahmotsavam, held in the month of Phalguna, generally in March.

What happens:

• The Vairamudi, a crown set with diamonds, is kept in government custody outside the town for the rest of the year
• It is brought to Melukote under armed police escort for the festival
• It is placed on the utsava murti for the procession
• The deity, wearing it, is taken through the town before very large crowds
• Afterwards the crown is returned to custody

The unusual part. Tradition holds that the crown is not to be looked upon before it is placed on the deity. The casket is opened at night, and the placing is done in conditions arranged so that the crown is seen first on the deity and not before.

Accounts of exactly how this is managed differ in the telling, and the temple does not publicise the details. What is consistent is that the tradition insists the crown belongs to the deity and is seen only as his.

Why this makes sense within the tradition. An ornament that may only be seen on the deity is making a precise theological point. The crown has no independent existence as a treasure. It is not an object with a value that a person might assess. It is his, and looking at it apart from him would be looking at the wrong thing.

The scale. Vairamudi draws several lakh people to a small hill town over the festival days, and it is one of the largest gatherings in southern Karnataka.

Other crowns are used at Melukote at other festivals, including the Rajamudi and the Krishnarajamudi, the latter associated with the Mysore royal house, so the temple's festival calendar is organised in part around which crown the deity wears.

Getting there

• Melukote, Pandavapura taluk, Mandya district, Karnataka
• About 50 km from Mysuru and roughly 150 km from Bengaluru, by road
• Mandya and Mysuru are the nearest railway stations, and Mysuru and Bengaluru are the airports
• Buses run from Mysuru and Mandya. A car is easier if you want the hilltop temple as well

Timings

• The Cheluvanarayana temple opens in morning and evening sessions with a midday closure. Check locally
• The Yoganarasimha temple on the summit has its own timings and involves a long climb

When to go

• October to March for comfortable weather
• Vairamudi Brahmotsavam in Phalguna, generally March, for the great festival, accepting very heavy crowds
• Weekdays outside festivals for a quiet visit
• Early morning for the light on the Kalyani

What to see, in order

• The Cheluvanarayana temple and the shrine of Bibi Nachiyar
• The Kalyani tank, walking right round it
• The climb to Yoganarasimha on the summit, which takes a while and is exposed
• The old streets of the town
• The Academy of Sanskrit Research, if it is open

Practical notes

• Dress conservatively. This is an orthodox Sri Vaishnava temple and dress rules are taken seriously. Men are generally expected to remove upper garments in the sanctum area at temples of this tradition, so check the local rule
• Leave footwear at the counters
• Carry water for the climb. There is little shade on the steps
• Monkeys are present in numbers. Do not carry visible food, secure spectacles and phones, and do not feed them
• Try the puliyogare, the tamarind rice, which Melukote is known for

If you go for Vairamudi

• Expect several lakh people in a small hill town with limited approaches
• Stay in Mysuru or Mandya and travel in, since local accommodation will be full
• Follow crowd instructions, keep your group together, keep children held, and do not push toward the procession

Combining the visit

• Srirangapatna, with its fort, the Ranganathaswamy temple and the Tipu Sultan sites, is on the way from Mysuru
• Mysuru itself for the palace and Chamundi hill
• Somanathapura, the Hoysala temple, is roughly 60 km away

A closing thought. Ramanuja is usually presented as a philosopher, and the philosophy is difficult and important. Melukote is where you can see what he was actually doing with it, which was rearranging who got to stand where in a building, and that turned out to matter for a very long time.