TN temple jewels with Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple???

The treasure unearthed from the Padmanabhaswamy temple at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala triggered a claim that a part of the treasure belongs to the Adikesava Perumal temple of Thiruvattar in Kanyakumari district.

Adikesava Perumal of Thiruvattar was the prime deity of the Travancore kings before they shifted their capital to Thiruvananthapuram from Padmanabhapuram in Kanyakumari district.

According to Mr Radhakrishnan, an advocate who has raked up the issue, the kings would not have completely forsaken their prime deity, Adikesava Perumal and donated all the treasure to the Padmanabhaswamy temple that was built later.

“Had the kings wanted to give more importance to the Padmanabha Swamy temple they would have created a much bigger idol of Padmanabhaswamy lying on the snake,” the advocate said.

The idol at the Thiruvananthapuram temple is 18-ft long, against the 22-ft statue of Adikesava Perumal, which is the longest statue of the Lord lying on a snake couch among the 108 Divya Desams, the holy sites of Vaishnavites, he said.

The section which supports this claim contends that the treasure from the Thurivattur temple might have been saved in the Thiruvananthapuram temple vaults to protect it from invaders like the Dutch and the Arcot Nawab.

“As the Thiruvattar temple has rivers (Thamirabarani, Kothaiyar and Pahrali) on three sides, construction of underground chambers at the temple would not have been possible and hence the jewels of Adikesava Perumal, believed to be the elder brother of Padmanabhaswamy, would have been saved at the temple vaults in Thiruvananthapuram,” said Mr Radhakrishnan.

Mr Rajasekaran, a devotee of the Thiruvattar Sri Adikesava Perumal, said that King Marthanda Varma — during whose period the capital of the Travancore kingdom was shifted to Thiruvananthapuram from Padmanabhapuram — in a “thali olai grantham” (writings in a palm leaf) had stated that the treasure in the vaults of Padmanabhaswamy temple should be used in times of famine in the country.

“It is very clear that the Travancore kings had saved the treasure at Padmanabhaswamy temple not only for religious purposes but also for the welfare of the Travancore state of which Kanyakumari district was a part,” Mr Rajasekaran was quoted as saying.

However the chairman of the Sri Adikesava Perumal Seva Trust, Mr C. Anantha Krishnan, disagrees with the claims, stating that nowhere in the history of the Travancore dynasty has it been stated that the kings had saved the jewels of Adikesava Perumal temple at Thiruvananthapuram.

Mr Anantha Krishnan, however, demanded the immediate retrieval of the jewels stolen from the Adikesava Perumal temple in 1991 and in 1994.

“The cases are pending at the courts at Nagercoil in Kanyakumari district and at the Thrissur court in Kerala and hence the recovered jewels of the temple are still in the courts’ custody,” Mr Anantha Krishnan said.