AMBALAPPUZHA PALPAYASAM Dear friends,
Yesterday Iwas listening in the YouTube channel about the Ambalappuzha temple, and legendabout Ambalappuzha palpayasam. The storyabout Ambalappuzha temple is told in the same manner as told in the Eithihya Mala by KottarathilSankunni. ChembakasseriRaja is told as Nampoothiri. I made a Google search which confirmedthe same. As dayspassed after establishing temple, the Raja started more interest in chess. Bhakthito Lord decreased day by day. King wanted to play chess every day and thefailed player was also honoured giving money and grains. As days passed drain in the treasurybecame very much. One day an escort(warrior) of some persons from nearby place to chembakasseri by name Krishnan Unni, ayoung man appeared before king for playing chess. King as usual welcomedhim. The young man started defeating inrepeated games. Raja started sweating.He asked the young man finally, what he requires. On compulsion he said, justgive paddy to fill the chess board on a condition. OH, that is all;I will give a cartful of paddy, why chess full. Krishnan Unnisaid, honoured king, just because you compelled I am telling- Put one grain ofpaddy in the first square. Fill the second square with double of the paddy- viz2 nos. Third Square onwards square of the paddy put in the previous one. Viz,4, 16, 256, 65536 etc. By reaching 8th square itself it became a bigdrain. How to fill up to 64th square? Raja found he was not an ordinary person. KrishnanUnni said, I don’t require grains, ensure you prepareevery day palpayasam in the Ambalappuzha temple every day and disappeared. Raja’sBhakthi changed to temple. Palpayasam started preparing daily and offered as nivedyamduring uchhapooja. It requiresabout six hours preparing payasam in the prescribed proportion. This story differs from another famous legend of an iyerasking back paddy given to treasury during a famine. Beforewriting this I searched Google, which mentioned instead of a young man,Krishnan Unni, an agedsanyasin playing chess. I havereproduced that version below:- The King ofAmbalappuzha was a big chess enthusiast. One day a sage challenged him (theking) to play the chess. To motivate this Sage, the King offered any rewardthat the sage could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of ricein the following manner: the king has to put a single grain of rice on thefirst chess square and double it on every consequent one. So King accepts thisand the game was started. Having lost the game and being a man of his word theking ordered a bag of rice to be brought to the chess board. He started placingthe grains according the reward asked by the sage. The followingpicture describes growth of number of grains: >From theabove image, at 64th square King has to place the total number of >grains areabout 9 million trillion tons. Upon seeingthe dilemma, the sage appeared to the king in his true-form, that of LordKrishna. He told the Kingthat he did not have to pay the debt immediately but could pay him over time. The kingwould serve paal-payasam (made of rice) in the temple freely to the pilgrimsevery day until the debt was paid off. Now as a partof temples serving meals after the Uchhapooja, in Ambalappuzha, meals areserved, one teaspoon full payasam is served, something like chotttuayasam in Chennai. Payasam hasto book at least a week back in the normal course in the temple now. Due tocovid 19 restrictions are there. Writer/compiler- R. Gopala Krishnan dated 12-8-2021 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1813959463.1282440.1628743095683%40mail.yahoo.com.
