Local tradition holds that Ananthapura is the moolasthanam — the original seat — of Ananthapadmanabhaswamy, and that the deity later travelled south to Thiruvananthapuram, where the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple now stands. Some versions say the journey was made through a cave. It is one of the largest claims any small shrine in Kerala makes, and it is worth setting out carefully, because the way it is usually presented is not the way the sources present it.
What a moolasthanam claim actually asserts
It is not a claim of similarity or of shared dedication. Plenty of temples across Kerala are dedicated to Vishnu reclining on Anantha; that is a widespread form and no two of them are in competition over it. A moolasthanam claim says something stronger: that this is where the deity was before, and the famous place is downstream of it. It reverses the direction of prestige. And the temple it reverses it against is not a minor one — Padmanabhaswamy in Thiruvananthapuram gave the state capital its name and is among the most significant Hindu temples in India.
What the reference works say
They attribute it to legend rather than to record, and they are unusually candid about the limits. The English Wikipedia article states outright that the past of the temple is still obscure except for some myths. That sentence is more valuable than any date, because it tells you what kind of ground you are on before you take a step onto it.
This site’s own record for the shrine gives a ninth-century dating, which circulates widely. We would treat it the way we treat the 1004 A.D. attached to a church at Bharananganam: as a traditional date rather than a documented one, unless somebody produces the inscription or the grant behind it. The difference between “founded in the ninth century” and “traditionally dated to the ninth century” costs a reader nothing and is the difference between a claim and a fact.
- Say: “Ananthapura is traditionally held to be the moolasthanam of the deity later worshipped at Thiruvananthapuram.”
- Do not say: “The Padmanabhaswamy deity originally came from Ananthapura.” That asserts a historical event.
- Do not fold in the cave. The cave is part of the legend, not a separate corroborating detail.
- And do not let the claim carry a date it has not earned.
What is actually verifiable, and it is not nothing
The shrine stands in the middle of a rectangular, spring-fed lake and is reached by a single footbridge. The English Wikipedia article calls it the only temple of this kind in Kerala, and it is that fact — not the moolasthanam tradition — which makes Ananthapura genuinely singular. Kerala has thousands of temples with tanks. It has one temple standing in a lake.
The mandapam ceiling carries a full set of carved wooden panels of the Dashavataram, the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Wooden temple carving of that quality is the kind of evidence that can actually be dated by people who know how to date it, which makes it, in principle, the most promising thing at the site for anyone wanting to put a century on the place.
Why the honest version is better here than anywhere
Because Padmanabhaswamy is a temple around which enormous, sensitive and litigated questions have been fought in living memory, and because Ananthapura does not need to borrow status from it. A small shrine standing alone in a spring-fed lake, reached by one footbridge, with a crocodile in the water and a carved ceiling above the worshippers, is remarkable on its own terms. The moolasthanam tradition is worth knowing and worth telling as a tradition. It is not what makes the place worth the drive from Kumbla.