Badarinath Temple, also known as Badarinarayana Temple, is a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu. It is located in the town of Badrinath in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, India. The temple is one of the 108 Divya Desams, sacred to Vaishnavism, where Vishnu is worshipped as Badrinath. Due to extreme weather conditions in the Himalayas, the temple is open for six months each year, from late April to early November. It is one of the most visited pilgrimage centres of India, having recorded 2.8 million (28 lakh) visits in just 2 months in 2022. It is one of the Char Dham pilgrimage sites.
The image of the presiding deity worshipped in the temple is a , the black granite deity of Vishnu in the form of Badrinarayan. The deity is considered by many Hindus to be one of eight svayam vyakta kshetras, or self-manifested deities of Vishnu.
The temple was included in the Uttar Pradesh state government Act No. 30/1948 as Act no. 16,1939, which later came to be known as "Shri Badarinath and Shri Kedarnath Mandir Act". The committee nominated by the state government administers both the temples and has seventeen members on its board.
The temple is mentioned in ancient religious texts like Vishnu Purana and Skanda Purana. It is glorified in the Naalayira Divya Prabandham, an early medieval Tamil canon of the Alvar saints from the 6th–9th centuries CE.
Location, architecture, and shrines
The temple is situated in the Garhwal Himalayas, along the banks of the Alaknanda River in Chamoli district in Uttarakhand. It lies at an elevation of 3133 m(10,279 ft) above mean sea level. Nar Parbat stands opposite to the temple, while Narayana Parbat is located behind the Neelkanth peak.
Adi Shankara established Badrinath as a pilgrimage site in the ninth century. The temple comprises three structures: the Garbhagriha (sanctum), the Darshan Mandapa (worship hall), and Sabha Mandapa (assembly hall). The sanctum's conical roof is approximately 15 m (49 ft) tall and features a small cupola topped with a gilt gold covering. The stone façade features arched windows, and a broad stairway ascends to the main entrance, a tall arched gateway. Just inside lies a mandapa, a spacious pillared hall that leads to the sanctum, or main shrine. The walls and pillars of the hall are adorned with intricate carvings.
The main shrine contains the Shaligram (black stone) deity of Badrinarayana, placed beneath a gold canopy under a Badri tree. The deity of Badrinarayana is depicted holding Panchajanya Shankha (conch) and Sudarshana Chakra (discus) in two raised arms while the other two arms rest on his lap in a Yogamudra (padmasana) posture. The sanctum also houses images of the god of wealthKubera, sage Narada, Uddhava, Nara and Narayana. The temple contains fifteen additional images that are worshipped within its premise. These include Lakshmi (the consort of Vishnu), Garuda (the vahana of Narayan), and Navadurga, the manifestation of Durga in nine forms. The temple also has shrines dedicated to Lakshmi Narasimhar and to saints such as Adi Shankara, Nar and Narayan, Ghantakarna, Vedanta Desika and Ramanujacharya. All of temple's deities are carved out of black stone.
The Tapt Kund, a group of hot sulphur springs just below the temple, are considered to be medicinal; many pilgrims consider it a requirement to bathe in the springs before visiting the temple. The springs have a year-round temperature of , while outside temperature is typically below all year round. The two water ponds in the temple are called Narad Kund and Surya Kund.
History
According to local tradition, the image of Badrinarayan was first served by Narada; later when the region became Buddhist, the Buddhists had Badrinarayan removed from the temple and thrown into the Tapt Kund. Later, Adi Shankara expelled all the Buddhists in the region, recovered Badrinarayan from the Tapt Kund, and reestablished the temple with the help of the Parmar ruler king Kanak Pal. The hereditary successors of the king governed the temple and endowed villages to meet its expenses. The income from a set of villages on the route to the temple was used to feed and accommodate pilgrims. The Parmar rulers held the title "Bolanda Badrinath", meaning speaking Badrinath. They had other titles, including Shri 108 Basdrishcharyaparayan Garharaj Mahimahendra, Dharmabibhab, and Dharamarakshak Sigamani.
According to another traditional story, Badrinarayan was removed from the temple and put into the Tapt Kund by the pujari (priest) who was forced to close the temple due to lack of pilgrims and revenue. When Ramanuja was in the Pandukeshwar temple, the Garhwali god Ghanta Karna possessed a person and told Ramanuja, who promptly went to Badrinath and reinstalled the deity.
The throne of Badrinath was named after the presiding deity; the king enjoyed ritual obeisance by the devotees before proceeding to the shrine. The practice was continued until the late 19th century. During the 16th century, the King of Garhwal moved the murti to the present temple. When the state of Garhwal was divided, the Badrinath temple came under British rule but the king of Garhwal continued as the chairman of the management committee. The selection of priest is done after consultation between Garhwal and Travancore royal families.
According to the Chaurasi Baithak (attributed to Gokulanatha), Vallabha visited the Badrinath temple on a fasting day and sought fruit, but finding none Badrinath ordered him to break the fasting rules and eat grain. There exists a baithak (seat) of Vallabha at the foot of the temple hill.
Tulsidas praises Nara-Narayana and Badarikashrama in his Vinaya Patrika.
The temple has undergone several major renovations due to its age and damage by an avalanche. In the 17th century, the temple was expanded by the Kings of Garhwal. After significant damage during the great 1803 Garhwal earthquake, it was largely rebuilt by the King of Jaipur.
Walter Hamilton's East-India Gazetteer (1828) described the temple as a conical structure 40 to 50 feet high, with a small cupola beneath a square shelving roof of copper surmounted by a gilded ball and spire, and reported that it had been left in so unstable a condition by a recent earthquake that it required propping to prevent its collapse. Hamilton recorded the principal image as about three feet high and cut in black stone, dressed in gold and silver brocade with only the head and hands uncovered.
It was still under renovation as late as the 1870s but these were completed by the time of the First World War. At that time, the town was still small, consisting of only the 20-odd huts housing the temple's staff, but the number of pilgrims was usually between seven and ten thousand. The Kumbh Mela festival held every twelve years raised the number of visitors to 50,000. Estimates from earlier in the century differ sharply. Hamilton put annual attendance at 50,000, most of them ascetics travelling on from the fair at Haridwar, whereas the East India Company revenue officer G. W. Traill, reporting on the same decades, estimated five to six thousand a year.The temple also enjoyed revenue from the rents owed to it by various villages bequeathed by various rajas.
Under colonial rule Before the Gorkha occupation of Garhwal the king was titular head of the temple and appointed the rawal. The settlement that followed the East India Company's assumption of eastern Garhwal in 1815 removed that authority from Sudarshan Shah; only in 1841 did the Government of India direct Company officials to restore some of the king's rights and withdraw from the temple's religious affairs.
Temple income came chiefly from two categories of village whose revenues temple officials, rather than the king, were entitled to collect: gūṇṭh villages, whose revenue went to the temple itself, and sadābart villages, whose revenue funded the feeding of pilgrims. Because sadābart receipts often exceeded what was required, British officials applied the surplus to pilgrimage infrastructure; in 1852 John Strachey obtained sanction to use it for bridges at Karnaprayag and Rudraprayag on the routes to Badrinath and Kedarnath. A cholera outbreak in 1820 prompted the establishment of Garhwal's first public health facilities along the pilgrimage routes, at Srinagar, Barahat (Uttarkashi) and Joshimath.
Pilgrimage shaped the region's modern infrastructure under British rule. Traill, an early British administrator of the region, commenced building the first modern pilgrimage road from Haridwar to Badrinath early in the nineteenth century, and temple-linked revenue was soon applied to public works: in 1852 the administrator Strachey obtained approval from the Sadr Board of Revenue of the Northwest Provinces to use surplus sadābart funds for bridges at Karnaprayag and Rudraprayag on the routes to Kedarnath and Badrinath, and in 1860 his successor Beckett described the local committee constituted to distribute those funds as "entirely secular", applying them to dispensaries, roads, bridges and pilgrim shelters.
Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858 and the Religious Endowments Act of 1863 (Act XX) required officials to withdraw from the management of religious endowments, though the Act was not applied to Garhwal and Kumaon until 1876. Successive commissioners nevertheless remained involved in the temple's affairs. In 1895 the Government of India commissioned a review of British policy towards Badrinath after the political agent to Tehri Garhwal advertised in South India for a successor to the office of naib rawal; the Governor-General's office concluded that Act XX had been ignored by successive commissioners and that the arrangements were irregular.
Legend
According to Hindu legend, Vishnu sat in meditation at this place. During his meditation, Vishnu was unaware of cold weather. Lakshmi, his consort, protected him in the form of the Badri tree (jujube or Indian date, called 'ber' in Hindi). Pleased by the devotion of Lakshmi, Vishnu named the place Badrika Ashrama. According to Atkinson (1979), the place used to be a jujube forest, which is not found there today. Vishnu in the form of Badrinath is depicted in the temple sitting in the padmasana posture. According to Brahma Vaivarta purana, Vishnu was chastised by sage Narada, who saw Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi, massaging his feet. Vishnu went to Badrinath to perform austerity, meditating for a long time in padmasana.
The Vishnu Purana narrates another version of the origins of Badrinath. According to the tradition, Yama had two sons, Nara, and Narayanaboth of which are modern names of Himalayan mountains. They chose the place to spread their religion and each of them wed the spacious valleys in the Himalayas. Searching for an ideal place to set up a hermitage, they came across the other four Badris of the Pancha Badri, namely Adibadri, Bridha Badri, Yoga-Dhyana Badri and Bhavisha Badri. They finally found the hot and cold spring behind the Alaknanda River and named it "Badri Vishala."
Literature