Vishnu
பெருமாள் विष्णु
Also Narayana, Perumal, Hari, Madhava, Govinda, Ranganatha, Padmanabha.
VaishnavaSmarta
Who this is
Vishnu is the one who keeps the world going, where Brahma makes it and Siva takes it back, and his method is to come down into it rather than rule from outside. The ten avatarams are that method: when dharma fails he takes a body, and the list runs from a fish through a boar and a dwarf to Rama and Krishna. He sleeps on the serpent Adisesha on the ocean of milk between creations, and Brahma is born from the lotus at his navel, which is why he is Padmanabha. In the Tamil country he is Perumal, sung by the twelve Alvars in the four thousand verses of the Divya Prabandham, and a hundred and eight shrines are counted as his.
How to recognise them
Dark, four armed, holding the conch, the discus, the mace and the lotus, with the Srivatsa mark on his chest and the Kaustubha jewel. Standing at Tirumala, reclining at Srirangam and at Thiruvananthapuram, seated at Kanchi. Garuda the eagle is his vehicle and faces him from outside the sanctum. The namam, the white and red mark worn on the forehead, is his, and the two subsects wear it in two shapes.
Family and companions
Husband of Lakshmi, who is Sri, and in the southern tradition of Bhudevi and Niladevi as well. Adisesha is his couch and Garuda his vehicle. Brahma is born from his navel. Through his avatarams he is Rama, son of Dasaratha, and Krishna, son of Vasudeva, and the tradition treats those lives as his own.
How they are worshipped
Thursday and Saturday; Ekadasi in both fortnights; the nakshatra Thiruvonam.
Thursday and Saturday are his days, and Ekadasi, the eleventh of each fortnight, is the fast kept for him. Tulasi is the leaf he takes and the plant is grown in the courtyard and watered daily. The thirumanjanam, the sahasranama archanai and the reading of the Divya Prabandham are the temple rites; at home the Vishnu Sahasranamam on a Saturday is the commonest observance in a Tamil house.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The churning of the ocean
The gods had lost their strength and were told to churn the ocean of milk for the nectar, with the asuras helping and the mountain Mandara as the churn. The mountain began to sink, so Vishnu became a tortoise and held it on his back. When the nectar came up and the asuras took it, he appeared as Mohini, a woman so beautiful that they handed it over to be shared out, and she gave it to the gods. One asura, Svarbhanu, slipped into the line and drank; the sun and the moon saw and told, and his head was cut off, and the head and the body went on living as Rahu and Ketu. The whole of the navagraha arithmetic in this app rests on that last detail.
Three steps
Mahabali, an asura king, was good and generous and ruled so well that the gods lost their place. Vishnu came to his sacrifice as Vamana, a dwarf brahmachari, and asked for three paces of ground. Bali’s guru saw what was coming and tried to stop him; Bali gave his word anyway, because a king does not take back a promise. Vamana grew until two steps covered the earth and the sky, and asked where to put the third. Bali offered his own head. He was pressed into the underworld, and granted the right to return and see his people once a year, which is Onam in Kerala.
The pillar and the hour
Hiranyakasipu had a boon that he could be killed by neither man nor beast, by day nor night, indoors nor out, on the ground nor in the air, by no weapon. His son Prahlada would not stop saying the name of Vishnu, and when the father struck a pillar and demanded to know whether his god was in that, Narasimha came out of it: a lion headed man, at dusk, on the threshold, on his lap, torn open with claws. The story is read as a boon answered exactly and a loophole found in every clause, and Ahobilam in Andhra keeps nine shrines along the gorge where it is said to have happened.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- The hundred and eight Divya Desams are the circuit, Srirangam the first of them, and the Alvars’ four thousand verses are sung in the temple as scripture beside the Sanskrit.
- Kerala
- Padmanabhaswamy at Thiruvananthapuram holds him reclining, and the ruler of Travancore ruled as his servant rather than in his own name.
- Andhra and Telangana
- Tirumala is the largest pilgrimage in the country, with the hair offering and the laddu, and Annavaram and Dwaraka Tirumala are the next.
- Odisha
- Jagannath at Puri is Vishnu in a wooden form renewed every nineteen years or so, and the Rath Yatra brings him out of the temple to the people.
- North India
- Badrinath is the Himalayan seat, and the Ekadasi fast and the Satyanarayana puja are the household observances.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
- Tirumala Sri Venkateswara Temple Tirumala, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh
- Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
- Varadharaja Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu
- Sri Badrinath Temple Badrinath, Chamoli, Uttarakhand
- Oppiliappan Temple, Thirunageswaram Thirunageswaram, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
- Kallazhagar Temple, Alagar Koil Alagar Koil, Madurai, Tamil Nadu
What is said
From the mantra library
In the almanac
Their nakshatras