The Badrinarayan Temple

Adi Shankaracharya who travelled all across the land, arrived in the Himalayas accompanied by his disciple Padmapadacharya. He came to meet a renowned scholar named Rishi Badrayan who had written a religious treatise called Vedanta Sutra and Shankaracharya had written a commentary or bhasya on the treatise. At that time an old temple to Vishnu had been destroyed here. Shankaracharya decided to retrieve the icon of the temple, an image of Vishnu that had been thrown into a pond called Narada Kund that stood by the river.

Padmapadacharya entered the pond and found the image that Shankaracharya called Badrinarayan. The image was worshipped in a nearby cave called Garuda Gumpha until a temple was built for it. The Shankaracharya was very active in reviving Hinduism and so he also established a math, a monastery and theological college, at the nearby town of Jyotirmath, now called Joshimath. He got priests from the Brahmin community of Rawal Nambudris of Kerala to come and take charge of the puja and even today the priests at the Badrinarayan Temple belong to that community.

The architecture of the Badrinarayan temple is quite unusual compared to the design that is prescribed in the traditional architectural treatises like the Vastu Shastra. The present temple is built of granite and the building is unlike the traditional design seen in other Hindu shrine in the Garhwal region. As a matter of fact its wide facade with arched gateways and windows painted in bright colours resembles the Buddhist viharas or monasteries of the Himalayas.

A staircase leads up to the facade has an arched gateway in the middle with a row of windows on both sides. The gateway is topped by kiosks with curving roofs and this leads to the first hall or mandapa. The hall has pillars and smaller shrines and leads to the garbha griha, the sanctum with the temple icon of Vishnu. The sanctum is said to belong to the original temple built by Shankaracharya and is the only section that has not been rebuilt over the following centuries.

In the dim, lamp lit garbha griha the ancient, black stone image of Vishnu sits on a high pedestal. This is Badrinarayan, the lord of Badrinath and he sits below a golden canopy, clad in silks and jewels and covered in flowers. It is made of the black stone called shalagram shila that is sacred to Vishnu. The image shows the god sitting in the meditative padmasana pose, legs crossed with his hands resting on his lap. There are fifteen other deities within the precinct of the temple that are also worshipped by pilgrims.

At the door of the sanctum is a shrine called the gaddi or seat of Shankaracharya where he sat in meditation. The images of Vishnu’s vehicle the Garuda, Kuber the god of wealth, Ganesha, Krishna’s friend Uddhava and the sages Narada, Nar and Narayan also stand within the sanctum. Vishnu’s consort the goddess Lakshmi has her own shrine next to the main sanctum and there are smaller shrines to Narasimha, the half man half lion avatar of Vishnu, the goddess Navadurga and a Ganesh called ashtabhuja as it has eight arms.

By October it begins to snow and the roads become difficult to navigate. As the priests prepare to shift to Joshimath, they leave a lighted lamp before Lord Badrinarayan in the garbha griha and it is said that the flame still flickers when they return and reopen the temple six months later in spring.