Venkateswara: Balaji of the seven hills

The name means "Lord of Venkata", the hill on which he stands; the Venkatam hill is already mentioned in Tamil Sangam poetry. Vaishnavas worship him as a form of Vishnu who chose to stay on earth through the Kali Yuga, the present dark age, for the sake of people in trouble. The Padma and Skanda Puranas and the Venkatachala Mahatmya, a text devoted to the hill, are the main written sources.

His consorts are Padmavati and Bhudevi, both held to be forms of Lakshmi, and Lakshmi herself is said to live on his chest: hence the name Srinivasa, "in whom Shri dwells". In the 12th century the philosopher Ramanuja set the temple's rituals in the Vaikhanasa tradition, and they are still kept that way.

The image in the Tirumala sanctum is the model for every Balaji picture in a taxi or a shop.

The temple's own account draws its legend from the Venkatachala Mahatmya and the Varaha Purana, among other Puranas. In it, the sage Bhrigu kicks Vishnu in the chest, the very place where Lakshmi lives, and Vishnu answers by apologising to him. Offended, Lakshmi leaves Vaikuntha, Vishnu's heaven. Vishnu follows her to earth, sits in an anthill under a tamarind tree on Venkata hill and is raised as Srinivasa by Vakula Devi, held to be Yashoda, Krishna's foster mother, born again.

Out hunting, Srinivasa meets Padmavati, daughter of King Akasha Raja, and the two are to marry. To pay for a wedding worthy of the gods he borrows a vast sum from Kubera, the treasurer of the gods. Devotees hold that he is still paying the interest, and that the money they drop into the temple hundi (donation box) helps him repay it. After the wedding, the story goes, he stayed on the hill as the image that stands there now.

At Tirumala the darshan, the sight of the deity, lasts a few seconds, and the queue that leads to it is treated as the pilgrimage itself rather than an obstacle. Free darshan is open to everyone and can take most of a day; paid slots are booked weeks or months ahead. Phones go into lockers, the dress code is checked at the gate, and black clothes are best left behind: in Dravidian tradition black is the colour of mourning.

Many pilgrims offer their hair. Whole families, children included, come out of the tonsure halls shaven, and over a ton of hair is collected every day. Everyone leaves with the Tirupati laddu, the temple's sweet prasad (food offered to the deity and shared out).

By custom, pilgrims first visit Padmavati at Tiruchanur, below the hill, and only then climb to her husband: darshan at the husband's shrine without the wife's is considered incomplete. The short mantra is Om namo Venkateshaya, "homage to Venkatesha"; on the hill the greeting you hear everywhere is "Govinda, Govinda".

Tirumala is the centre, but Balaji has temples across the south and far beyond it.

The Srivari Brahmotsavam is the year's great festival at Tirumala: nine days in September or October, running alongside Navratri and so close to [Dussehra](/en/festivals/dussehra/). Every morning and evening Malayappa rides through the four Mada streets around the temple on a different mount (the serpent, the swan, the lion, the elephant, the sun and moon), and on the fifth evening on Garuda, Vishnu's eagle. The processions pass outside the temple, so anyone can stand and watch. Vaikuntha Ekadashi in December or January brings the other great crowd, when the queue for darshan swells past a hundred thousand a day.

Venkateswara is Vishnu, so his festivals and stories run alongside those on the [Vishnu page](/en/deities/vishnu/).