USA, July 11, 2011 (by Vasudha Narayanan, Director of the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions , University of Florida, for the Huffington Post):
One of the thousand names given to the Hindu God Vishnu is Sri-nidhi — he whose treasure is the Goddess of Fortune. “Treasure” and “fortune” were words that were used to describe the recent discovery in a Vishnu temple at Thiruvananthapuram, in the state of Kerala, India, where a hoard worth more than $22 billion (give or take) was discovered in the vaults. The treasure reportedly includes hundreds of golden chairs, jars and jeweled crowns, thousands of precious gems, sacks full of gold coins, and an image of Vishnu studded with 1,000 diamonds. And that is just the beginning. It seems incredible that a wealth of this proportion lay in a place so central and well known without being looted.
Vishnu is usually known by a local name in temples in south India, and in Thiruvanantapuram he is called Padma-nabha-swamy, or “the lord from whose navel emerges the lotus.” The lotus in this context is an allusion to creation and the created universe. Vishnu, a name that means “the all pervasive one,” reclines in this temple on the coils of his serpent-servant, called Ananta (“without end” or “infinite”). Poets simply referred to the temple-town as Ananta-puram or the “Endless City.”
The Hindu temple here, like those in many parts of the world, seems to have undergone major renovation whenever royal patronage willed it, and the last major rebuilding was in the 18th century. Over the last two millennia, several ruling families — kings and queens — have held power over the areas encompassed by the city of Thiruvananthapuram today. The city itself became the capital of the state called Travancore by the British. Originally occupying a large territory, “it was gradually reduced to the present Travancore with its area of 6653 miles” says P. Shungoonny Menon in his “A History of Travancore from Earliest Times in 1878,” with considerable exactitude and regret.
Members of the Travancore royal family are popularly known by the first two names which, taken together, serve as an astrological indicator referring specifically to a star/asterism connected to the exact moment when they were born. Thus, the name of the last “reigning” monarch was Chithira Thirunal (1912-1991), which literally translates as “the sacred day (thirunal) when the moon was near the star Chitra (Spica/Virgo).”
However, the rulers are also famously known as Sri Padmanabha dasa or Padmanabha sevini — “the servant of Lord Padmanabha.” Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma in the 18th century made his kingdom over to the deity in the Padmanabhaswamy temple, who was considered the “real” monarch — the earthly rulers held power as his servant.
In the Indian judicial system, as an Indian Supreme Court lawyer has observed in the past, deities are considered to be “legal entities who could have a legal representation in courts through trustees or an in-charge of the temple in which they are worshipped.” Further, legal experts agree that the deity resident in a temple is a “juristic entity,” and it has “juridical status” with power to sue and be sued. With so many people who claim to be stake-holders and the slow moving judicial system in India, it is likely that the deity who reclines on the Endless Ananta will probably be involved for the foreseeable future, at least, in legal disputes.
Nammalvar promised endless fame for those who worshiped the deity in Anantapuram. The royal servants of Padmanabha have in their times, through their visionary contribution to education, scholarship and the arts, encouraged a culture that promoted literacy and intellectual pluralism in multiple registers. And those are endless riches worth bragging about in the Endless City.
(read the full article at the source, linked above.)