A temple inside the Palace - Prasanna Krishnaswamy Temple, Mysore Palace, India

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Mysore Palace is the most attractive site of Mysore city, the heritage city of South India. Mysore Palace complex is massive, and it houses around 12 temples. One of the main temples of the castle is Prasanna Krishnaswamy Temple, also known as Bala Krishna Temple.


The temple's highlight is that the principal deity, Bala Krishna, is found in crawling posture, with butterball in hand. This is a rare posture that cannot be generally found in other temples. Especially it is scarce to find the main deity itself in this posture.


As per the legend, the Mysore king Krishnaraja Wodeyar III was fascinated by the crawling Krishna icon in a temple in Mallur. He wanted to shift the same to his palace. After many people tried in vain to remove the deity from Mallur, the king gave up this idea, and instead, he installed a similar image in the palace and built this temple. Thus, this king built the Prasanna Krishnaswamy temple in 1829 CE.


Besides Bala Krishna, this old temple also enshrines a few other icons and shrines. It has separate shrines for Hanuman, Lakshmi Narasimha with Sudarshana on back, Rama-Sita-Lakshmana, Vishnu, Lakshmi, and Ranganatha. In addition, the temple houses around 40 bronze icons. The statues of king Krishnaraja Wodeyar and his two wives are also found. There is a separate shrine for sage Atri, who was believed to be the Raja Guru for the ancestors of Wodeyars. There is another shrine that houses Ramanujacharya, Paravasudeva, Anathasavna and Rajamannar.


Another major highlight of the temple is the central pillared hall, which has the traditional Mysore paintings done on the walls. The images portray the stories of Bhagavata (life history of Lord Krishna).


When you visit Mysore Palace, ensure that you visit this temple too.


Happy travelling.




Visit my site, krishnakumartk.com, to know more about the travel guides and other books that I have written.



Location: Mysuru, Karnataka, India

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