History of Sri Krishna temple – udupi

In Sanskrit, Udupi is a combination of the words Udu and Pa, which means ‘stars’ and ‘lord’. Legend says that the moon prayed fervently to Shiva here to get rid of a curse. Hearing his prayers, Shiva blessed him in the form of lingam (an abstract or aniconic representation of Shiva) which you can see in Chandramouleshwara Temple. And so it believed that since the moon prayed here, the place was named Udupi.

Dedicated to Lord Krishna, Udupi Sri Krishna Temple or Krishna Matha was established in the town of Udupi in the 13th century by Shri Madhvacharya, a Vaishnavite saint and founder of the Dvaita school of Vedanta for the prosperity of its people.

According to mythology, Devaki, the mother of Lord Krishna, had entreated him in his adulthood at Dwarka to show her one of the frolics from his childhood. In response to his mother’s wish, Krishna once again assumed the form of his childhood.

Witnessing this, Rukmini, wife of Lord Krishna, requested her husband for an idol of Balkrishna, his child form, to be carved out in Shaligram Shila for her daily worship. This rare image was deposited by Arjuna at a holy spot called Rukmini Vana in Dwaraka when Krishna departed from earth at the close of Dwapara Yuga. In the course of being worshipped by hundreds of devotees with the application of sandalwood paste, the idol got completely covered with the sandalwood paste.

A few years later, Dwaraka was completely engulfed by the sea. The idol of Lord Krishna was also engulfed as a consequence of a great flood that occurred at the end of the era of Krishna.

Centuries later, a sailor found the idol of Lord Krishna in the shape of hard rock on an island, mistaking it for a clod of Gopi Chandan. Sometime later, when his ship was faced with a raging sea storm somewhere near the seashore of Vadabhandeshwar (near Malpe beach port), Saint Madhvacharya sensing the danger by intuition, beseeched Vishnu to calm the weather.

Once the ship sailed ashore safely, the sailor requested the saint to accept something from his ship as a token of gratitude. Saint Madhvacharya chose to accept the sandalwood rock as his gift and when he broke the rock, the idol of Lord Krishna emerged from it bit by bit.

Realising through his deific vision that it was the same Balkrishna idol that Rukmini worshipped, the saint was filled with joy and immediately decided to bring home the idol to his Matha at Udupi. He installed it with the avowed purpose of removing all the pains and obstacles which beset his devotees on their way to salvation.

There is another interesting legend about the peculiar west-facing position of the idol at Udupi Sri Krishna Temple. Originally, Saint Madhvacharya had installed the idol facing the east. In the 16th century, a devout devotee of Krishna, Kanakadasa, was denied entry to the Udupi Sri Krishna Matha through the main eastern entrance because he was from a lower caste.

Desperate to get a glimpse of his god, Kanakadasa ran to the western side of the temple and began to pray fervently to Krishna to appear before him through the three holes in the wall.

Impressed by his devotion, the Balkrishna turned to the west and appeared to Kanakadasa through the window with nine holes known as Kanakana Kindi (and also called the Navagraha Kitiki). It is considered a beautiful story of faith and devotion. Since then the idol of Balkrishna rests facing west inside the temple and it is also when the tradition of offering prayers to the god only through the 9-holed window in the western wall of the temple began.

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