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annual report, the chairman of the temple ’s board of trustees reported that “as an
established religious organization...the temple has extended modest interest-free
loans to temples that are in embryonic stages.”^2
The Penn Hills temple enshrines a manifestation of Vishnu in which he is called
Venkateswara, or lord (isvara)of the hill known as Venkata in South India.
Venkateswara temples now exist in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania; Malibu, California;
Aurora, Illinois; and Atlanta, Georgia. The word “Venkata” is said to mean “[that]
which can burn sins.”^3 The American temple was built with the help, backing, and
blessing of one of the most popular, richest, and oldest temples in India. The Indian
“sponsor” was the Venkateswara temple in Tiru Venkatam, better known as Tiru-
mala or Tirupati. The Penn Hills temple bulletin specifically says that “Tirumala
Tirupathi Devasthanam...ofIndia will be the main consulting institution on re-
ligious matters.”^4 The deities were carved in India under the supervision of this
temple, and officials from Tiru Venkatam attend the major rituals that the Penn Hills
temple undertakes.
While the temple at Tiru Venkatam has always been well known and has enjoyed
royal patronage in the last thousand years, it is only in the last hundred years that it
has attracted exceedingly large numbers of pilgrims and revenues. The popularity of
the temple is said to have increased phenomenally after themaha santi samproksanam
in 1958. Cars, diamonds, and approximately twenty kilograms of gold (from various
pieces of jewelry dropped in thehundi) are collected every month. The temple is lo-
cated on 10.75 square miles of Tirumala Hills and until 1965, when the government
took them over, owned more than six hundred villages. Thus the temple was in a
unique position to offer help in tangible forms to the new shrine in Penn Hills.^5
The temple at Penn Hills (like the one in India) can be called Hindu in that it is
sectarian; it is a Srivaisnava temple. The Srivaisnava community became important
about the tenth century c.e.In fact, the first occurrence of the term “Srivaisnava”
itself, as far as I have been able to trace it, occurs in an inscription in the Tiru
Venkatam temple in India, in the year 966. The community recognizes the validity
of both Sanskrit and vernacular (Tamil) scripture and the philosophical vision of
the Vedantic teacher Ramanuja. Since the eleventh century, the community has in-
stituted in all their temples the recitation of specific Sanskrit texts and the Tamil
works of the alvars, poet-saints who lived between the seventh and ninth centuries
c.e.Although the Tiru Venkatam temple has attracted devotees from all over India
and has been a center of national pilgrimage, it has not compromised the particular,
sectarian, Srivaisnava nature of its rituals, conducted according to the vaikhanasa
scripture, nor the recitation of both Sanskrit and Tamil scripture.