Sri Krishna Matha, Udupi

Deity

Udupi Sri Krishna, seen through the nine-holed Kanakana Kindi window

Where

Karnataka · 13.34N 74.75E

Usual hours

4.30 am – 1 pm, 3 pm – 9 pm — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Guru Chandran

Visited for

Madhvacharya’s matha, where the Lord turned to face a devotee kept outside. Krishna Janmashtami and the two-yearly Paryaya are its days.

The sthala purana has it that Madhvacharya calmed a storm off Malpe and saved a ship, and that the grateful captain offered him whatever he wished. He asked for a lump of gopichandana clay being carried as ballast, and inside it is said to have been an image of Krishna — the one Rukmini had worshipped at Dwarka.

The other story belongs to Kanakadasa, a devotee of a caste not admitted into the temple. He is said to have sung from outside the western wall until the wall cracked and the image turned around to face him. The deity still faces west, and is seen through a small nine-holed window in that wall, the Kanakana Kindi.

Madhvacharya founded the matha here in the thirteenth century and established eight mathas around it. Worship of the Krishna image passes from one of the eight to the next in the Paryaya, a handover held once in two years; the cycle has been kept for centuries and the dates are published well in advance.

The temple is a centre of Dvaita learning, and the mathas around the square run their own schools. Free meals are served every day as part of the establishment, not as a festival arrangement.

The image is seen through the Kanakana Kindi, the silver-framed window of nine openings in the western wall, which is how almost every visitor first sees it.

The Madhva Sarovar tank lies in front. The Chandramouleeshwara and Anantheshwara temples stand beside the matha and are older than it.

The Rathabeedhi, the car street around the temple, has the eight mathas ranged along it, and the whole square can be walked in twenty minutes.

Krishna Janmashtami, kept here as Vittla Pindi, is the great festival, with the chariots drawn along the Rathabeedhi.

The Paryaya, in January every second year, is the largest gathering. Madhva Navami and the Deepotsava in Kartika are the other days.

Also called

Sri Krishna Matha, Rajatha Peetha Kshetra

Period

Founded in the thirteenth century by Madhvacharya, with later building around it

Reaching it

Udupi is about 60 km north of Mangaluru on the coastal highway. Udupi railway station at Indrali is roughly 3 km from the temple.

• Anegudde Vinayaka Temple 17.2 km · Ganapathi
• Kateel Durgaparameshwari Temple 40.7 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Mangaladevi Temple, Mangaluru 54.3 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Sringeri Sharadamba Temple 54.8 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Sri Mookambika Temple, Kollur 58.2 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Horanadu Annapoorneshwari Temple 62.7 km · Sakta (Amman)

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

• Were the hours right when you went?
• Is anything on this page wrong or out of date?
• A photograph of the gopuram, the tank, or the notice board

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