Sri Raghavendra tirtha - miracle

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The British were in India and held great sway through the East India

Company. One of their rewarding financial `arrangements' was to arrange for

monies being paid to temples for their maintenance to instead be paid as a

tax to them.

The Indian system is that endowments are often left by rich devotee patrons

so that the Deity of the temple can be worshipped in perpetuity. And often

the endowment was the entire village wherein the temple stood, along with

all its fields, many of its rented houses and tithes. In the world-view of

the Europeans this did not make sense. Why should taxes be paid to a sacred

`image' in a temple and not to the ruling monarch or the empowered officers?

 

Sir Thomas Munroe, one of the East India Company officers in south India in

the early part of the 19th century, was asked to `resume' one such endowment

village: the small community of Mantralaya. On the appointed day he met with

the elders of the temple who told him that he could pay his respects at the

Samadhi (tomb) of the great Madhva saint who had established the temple -

Sri Raghavendra Tirtha Swami.

 

Sir Thomas slipped off his shoes and entered the tomb. The onlookers then

heard him talking with someone within. However, they could only hear Sir

Thomas's voice and not the person he was talking to.

 

Several minutes later he emerged from the tomb with some yellow-coloured dry

rice in his hand. He told the onlookers that he had just spoken to `the

swami' who had convinced him of the irrevocability of the endowment and

given him some Prasad, and was astonished when the elders told him who had

given it to him!

 

Sir Thomas ordered the rice - Mantrakshate Prasad - to be cooked along with

his evening meal and gave up any thought of `resuming' the taxes of the

village to the British.

 

(This episode is found in a British newspaper of the time, The Madras

Gazettier, which can still be viewed at the Collectorate in Anantapura)