History of Tirupati and Tirumala

In TTD's telling, the hill belonged first to Varaha, the boar incarnation of Vishnu, who raised the Earth from the flood and chose to stay at Venkatadri. The hills are said to be Adisesha, the serpent on whom Vishnu rests, with Venkatadri as his hood.

The story of Venkateswara begins with a test. The sage Bhrigu, sent to find out which of the three great gods deserved the fruit of a sacrifice, kicked Vishnu on the chest, and Vishnu only asked whether the sage's foot was hurt. Lakshmi, whose place is on Vishnu's chest, left in anger for Karavirapura, today's Kolhapur. Vishnu went searching for her and settled in an anthill under a tamarind tree on Venkatadri. Brahma and Shiva took the form of a cow and calf to feed him; when a cowherd struck at the cow with his axe, Vishnu rose from the anthill and took the blow on his own head.

Later Vishnu lived as Srinivasa, son of the hermit Vakula Devi, whom tradition identifies with Krishna's foster mother Yashoda. He fell in love with Padmavati, a princess King Akasa Raja had found in a lotus, and to pay for a wedding worthy of the Lord he took a great loan from Kubera, the god of wealth. When Lakshmi returned and found her husband married again, the Lord turned to stone before both his consorts, to remain on the Seven Hills for the good of humanity in the Kali Yuga. Lakshmi stays on the left side of his chest and Padmavati on the right.

The earliest literary mention is in the Cilappatikaram, one of the great Tamil epics, which describes the red-eyed Lord with discus and conch on the hill of Venkatam. Tradition credits the first temple to a Tondaman king. The first recorded endowment came from a Pallava queen, Samavai, who gave jewels and land to pay for festivals; TTD also credits her with the silver image of Bhoga Srinivasa, still used in the daily rituals. Pallava, Chola, Pandya and later Vijayanagara rulers were all patrons.

The shrine took much of its present shape in the 13th to 16th centuries. TTD dates the wall around the sanctum to 1244–1250. Under Vijayanagara the gifts became lavish: a minister from Chandragiri built the Ghanta Mandapam in 1461, Saluva Narasimha added the four corner pavilions of the Sampangi circuit in 1470, and Krishnadevaraya's gold paid for the gilding of the Ananda Nilayam roof. On 2 January 1517 he installed copper statues of himself and his two queens, which still stand in the pavilion inside the main gate. When the emperors camped at Chandragiri, the last Vijayanagara capital, the temple bells were relayed to them so they could dine after the Lord's offering. In the 15th century the poet Annamacharya sang of the hill; his songs and his descendants' survive on about 3,000 copper plates.

The Sri Vaishnava teacher Ramanujacharya visited Tirupati three times in the 11th and 12th centuries. He settled a dispute between Shaivas and Vaishnavas over the nature of the image, set the rituals in the Vaikhanasa Agama tradition, introduced the recitation of the Tamil hymns of the Divya Prabandham, and set up the Tirupati Jeeyar Mutt, whose jeeyars still oversee the rituals. In 1130 he consecrated the Govindaraja Swamy temple below the hill. The village that had stood near today's Kapila Theertham road moved beside it, and the town grew around this temple.

After Vijayanagara fell, the temple passed to Golconda in 1656, then briefly to the French and to the Nawab of the Carnatic until 1801. The East India Company took over its management and largely left the rituals alone; in 1843 it handed the temple, with the other temples of Tirupati, to the Mahants of the Hathiramji Mutt. They ran it for six generations, until the TTD Act of 1932 created Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. Today TTD works under the Andhra Pradesh government.

The pilgrimage of the 20th century took shape under TTD: the first ghat road opened in 1944 and the second in 1974, free meals for pilgrims began in 1985, and the Srivari Seva volunteer scheme in 2000. In 2009 the Tirupati laddu received a geographical indication tag. More in temples in Tirupati and the seva guide.