The name, the betel and the broken idol

Most temple legends are recorded reverently or not at all. The Malayalam Wikipedia article on Ambalappuzha does something rarer: it sets out the legend that explains the temple’s name in full, with relish, and then states in the following sentence that it cannot be true. Both halves are worth having.

The ashtabandham would not set

At the consecration, the story goes, the ashtabandham would not take. Ashtabandham is the eight-ingredient resinous paste that fixes an idol into its pedestal — the literal bonding of the deity to the temple — and if it will not set, nothing can proceed. The two tantris were in real difficulty.

Naranathu Bhranthan happened to be passing. He is one of the great figures of Kerala legend, the madman of the Parayi-petta panthirukulam, who spent his life rolling a boulder up a hill in order to watch it roll down again, and who is understood to be holy precisely because he is useless.

They asked him for help. He put down the fish he was carrying — outside the sanctum, the account is careful to say — and spat out his mouthful of betel. The idol held.

Because the installation had been accomplished by pouring thambulam, betel, the place was called Thambulappuzha; and Thambulappuzha, worn down, became Ambalappuzha.

And then the rebuttal

The next line reads: ഈ ഐതിഹ്യത്തിന് ചരിത്രപരമായ അടിത്തറയില്ല. This legend has no historical basis. The reason given is simple chronology — Naranathu Bhranthan belongs to a period far earlier than the Chembakassery dynasty, so he cannot have wandered past this consecration.

And then, having said that, the same article notes that devotees hold to the story firmly all the same.

We have printed both because the pair is more honest than either alone. A place can know that its founding story does not survive a date check and go on telling it, and that is not hypocrisy — it is what a name is. Ambalappuzha almost certainly means something duller. It is called what it is called because of a man with a mouthful of betel who was not there.

Two tantris, and how they got that way

The other thing to know about this consecration is that it produced an arrangement almost unique in Kerala. Ambalappuzha has two tantric families of equal right — Puthumana Illam here, and Kadikakkol Illam of Kumaranalloor in Kottayam — where nearly every Kerala temple has one.

The reason is a quarrel that turned physical. Puthumana, then serving as an assistant, said the idol intended for the sanctum was flawed. Kadikakkol, the senior man, would not accept the objection.

So Puthumana took his staff and smashed the idol — and muddy water ran out of it.

Asked, reasonably enough, where a sound one might be found at this point, he said in the temple pond. He dived in, brought one up, and installed it at the appointed muhurtham, on time. The tantric right was divided between the two families from that day and has stayed divided.

The idol he is said to have brought out of the water is the one in the sanctum now: a devanirmita bimbam, an image not made by human hands, one of only three so regarded in Kerala. The other two are at Guruvayur and Poornathrayeesa.

The flute

There is a third legend, and it explains why there is a temple here at all rather than somewhere else. The Chembakassery king was out on the water with the sage Vilwamangalam when he heard an odakkuzhal, a reed flute, playing — and could see nobody playing it. The sage told him it was Krishna’s own flute, and that a temple would have to be built on that spot.

Three legends, then, for one temple: one that explains the site, one that explains the name and is disowned by its own source, and one that explains why two families share the priesthood. None of them agrees with the others about very much. All of them are still told.