Srisailam Temple: Mallikarjuna Jyotirlinga, Bhramaramba Shakti Peetha and History

The Srisailam temple, formally the Sri Bhramaramba Mallikarjuna Swamy temple, stands on the Nallamala hills above the Krishna in Andhra Pradesh, and it’s the rare site where a jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha share one campus. Mallikarjuna is Shiva, named second in the jyotirlinga hymn. Bhramaramba is the goddess. Most aspirants remember the first half and forget the second.

The other common slip is the state. Pilgrims often reach Srisailam from Hyderabad, and the Srisailam dam sits on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, so the temple drifts into Telangana in revision notes. It doesn’t belong there. The temple town is in Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh, which was earlier part of Kurnool district.

Location: Nallamala Hills, the Krishna and a Tiger Reserve

Srisailam sits in the northernmost part of the Nallamala range, at over 1,500 ft, according to the Nandyal district administration, which puts it 158 km from Nandyal, 180 km from Kurnool and 210 km from Hyderabad. The Nallamalai, as the NTCA calls the range, is an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats.

• The river: the Krishna runs in a gorge below the temple, and Pathala Ganga, the bathing point on the river, is reached by steps. The river’s wider course is covered in the note on the Krishna river.
• The dam: the Srisailam project on the Krishna is a gravity dam about 145 m high and 512 m long, on the border of the old Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh) and Mahabubnagar (Telangana) districts, with seven 110 MW units on the right bank and six 150 MW units on the left, according to the Krishna River Management Board.
• The forest: the temple lies in the Nallamala landscape of the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve, which the NTCA calls one of the biggest tiger reserves in the country: 5,937 sq km in all, with a core of 3,721 sq km and a buffer of 2,216 sq km across five revenue districts.

That’s why Srisailam turns up in three syllabus corners at once: culture for the temple, geography for the Krishna and the Eastern Ghats, and environment for the tiger reserve. The dam belongs to the family of multipurpose dams that also shape the river’s inter-state politics.

The Nallamala Forest in Numbers

The forest around the Srisailam temple is worth a few lines of its own, because environment questions use it as an example of an Eastern Ghats dry forest. The NTCA’s brief note on the tiger reserve gives the numbers:

• Forest type: mostly southern tropical dry deciduous forest, with an undergrowth of bamboo and grass.
• Plants: 1,581 taxa from 149 families recorded in the Nallamalai, including endemics such as Andrographis nallamalayana.
• Animals: over 80 species of mammals and 303 species of birds, with the tiger, leopard, wolf and wild dog at the top.
• The river: the Krishna holds mugger crocodiles, otters and turtles, and grass savannas line its gorges.
• The core: a little over a third of the core area, 36.62%, is the Rajiv Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary.

A jyotirlinga pilgrimage town sits inside this forest, and that tension comes back in the section on contemporary relevance.

A Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha in One Campus

Srisailam’s defining feature is the pairing: Mallikarjuna, Shiva as a jyotirlinga, and Bhramaramba, the goddess, worshipped in the same temple complex.

• Mallikarjuna: the presiding deity is a natural stone formation in the shape of a linga, listed among the twelve jyotirlingas, according to the Nandyal district administration. The Dwadasha Jyotirlinga Stotram names it in its first verse: “Srishaile Mallikarjunam”, Mallikarjuna on the Srishaila hill.
• Bhramaramba: the name joins bhramara, a bee, with amba, mother. The temple’s own history calls the shrine a Shakti Peetha, the spot where Sati’s neck is said to have fallen, and it’s commonly counted among the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas, the most revered subset of the goddess shrines covered in the note on the 51 Shakti Peethas.
• Why it matters: for a question on Shaiva-Shakta synthesis, Srisailam is the cleanest single example, since both traditions have a primary shrine inside one enclosure.

Many Shiva temples have a goddess shrine inside the enclosure. What makes Srisailam different is that the goddess shrine is itself a Maha Shakti Peetha, so the site sits on both pilgrim lists at full rank.

Srisailam on the Jyotirlinga Map

Srisailam is the only jyotirlinga in Andhra Pradesh and one of just two in South India on the standard list, the other being Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. Of the other ten, seven sit in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, which makes Srisailam the hinge between the Deccan cluster and the island shrine at the tip of the peninsula.

• Stotram position: named second, after Somnath, in the hymn’s first verse.
• The southern pair: Rameswaram is a coastal island temple known for its corridors, the third of which runs 197 m east to west; the Srisailam temple is a hill-forest temple known for its walls and gateways.
• Access as history: for most of its past, the hard part of a Srisailam pilgrimage was reaching a hilltop through forest. The temple’s own history credits the Reddi king Prolaya Vema Reddy with a stepped pathway up to Srisailam and down to Pathala Ganga.

History: From the Satavahanas to Vijayanagara

The Srisailam temple is a layered building. The temple’s own history traces the first mention of the hill to a Satavahana inscription, and most of what stands today was built or enlarged under the Reddi kings and the Vijayanagara rulers; the Nandyal district administration dates the present temple to the 14th century.

The early layers connect Srisailam to the Satavahana dynasty, and the later ones to the Reddi and Vijayanagara courts, which means the temple can illustrate more than a millennium of Deccan patronage in one example.

Krishnadevaraya’s 1516 Visit

According to the temple’s history, Krishnadevaraya visited Srisailam in 1516 on his way back from a war with the Gajapatis and built salu mandapas, rows of pillared halls, on both sides of the car street. He is also credited with the temple’s Rajagopuram, the main gateway tower.

The visit is also on stone. A Telugu inscription dated Saka 1438, published in South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. 16, records his journey to Srisailam during his campaign of conquest and his gift of two villages, Parumanchala and Atukuru, to Mallikarjuna.

That single visit is why the gateway reads as Vijayanagara work. It’s also a useful example of how Krishnadevaraya tied his campaigns to public acts of temple patronage.

Architecture: Walls, Gopurams and Mandapas

Srisailam belongs to the southern, Dravidian idiom, and its most striking feature is the enclosure wall rather than the shrine. The high walls enclose a long rectangle, and the Nandyal district administration notes that they’re carved with elephants, hunting scenes and Shiva in different manifestations.

• Prakara (enclosure) walls: long carved panels on a high rectangle, best read as a stone picture-book of Shaiva stories.
• Gopurams: gateway towers on the enclosure, with the Rajagopuram credited to Krishnadevaraya.
• Mukha mandapa: the hall in front of the sanctum, from the Vijayanagara period.
• Salu mandapas: the pillared halls lining the car street.

Set it beside the Trimbakeshwar temple and the contrast teaches itself. Trimbakeshwar’s identity is its curvilinear tower; Srisailam’s is its walls and gateways. The Vijayanagara layer here is best studied alongside the note on Vijayanagara architecture.

Srisailam Temple Facts Table

The table below collects the facts that turn up most in objective questions.

Contemporary Relevance

Srisailam’s recent story is about managing pilgrims inside a protected forest, with the Union government paying for the pilgrim side. The three pressures come from the temple, the forest and the river.

• The PRASHAD project: on 26 December 2022, President Droupadi Murmu inaugurated the “Development of Srisailam Temple” project, completed at Rs 43.08 crore and fully funded by the Union Ministry of Tourism. It added an amphitheater, illumination and a sound-and-light show, digital interventions, a tourist amenity center, parking, changing rooms, toilets, souvenir shops, a food court and banking facilities. The PRASHAD scheme is a central sector scheme launched in 2014-15.
• The forest: the NTCA’s note on the tiger reserve flags heavily used roads, markets and power lines, frequent human-wildlife conflict in peripheral villages, and tourism concentrated on the eastern and southern edges. It also records the involvement of Chenchu tribes in protection through 60 base camps, a link to the wider note on the tribes of India.
• The river: the Srisailam project is one of the dams the Krishna River Management Board lists, a reminder that the temple overlooks water two states share.

There are three ways to see Srisailam’s future. One treats it purely as a pilgrimage center to be scaled up. Another treats the pilgrims as a threat to the forest. Neither extreme is a good idea. It is wise to build pilgrim facilities inside the town, as the PRASHAD project did, and to keep traffic through the reserve under the tiger reserve’s own management rules.

How the Topic Is Tested and How to Revise It

Srisailam is tested as a pairing in Prelims and as an example in Mains, so revise both the pairs and the arguments.

• Prelims pairs: Srisailam and the Nallamala hills; Srisailam and the Krishna; the Nallamala as an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats.
• Statement questions: the jyotirlinga and Shakti Peetha combination, Krishnadevaraya’s 1516 visit, the tiger reserve, and the PRASHAD project.
• Mains culture answers: Shaiva-Shakta synthesis; layered patronage from the Satavahanas to Vijayanagara.
• Mains environment and tourism answers: pilgrimage inside a tiger reserve, tribal participation in protection, and central funding of pilgrim infrastructure.

Four slips cost marks on the Srisailam temple more often than missing facts:

• Placing it in Telangana. The temple is in Nandyal district, Andhra Pradesh; only the dam sits on the state border.
• Treating Bhramaramba as a second jyotirlinga. She’s a Maha Shakti Peetha; the jyotirlinga is Mallikarjuna.
• Crediting the whole temple to Krishnadevaraya. He added the salu mandapas and the Rajagopuram to a shrine that had drawn royal patronage for centuries before him.
• Quoting the tiger reserve’s core as its total. The NTCA gives 3,721 sq km for the core and 5,937 sq km in all.

The one-line summary: Nallamala and the Krishna in Nandyal district; Mallikarjuna with Bhramaramba; Satavahana to Vijayanagara; Krishnadevaraya in 1516; PRASHAD in 2022. For the other eleven jyotirlingas and the disputed sites, see the note on the 12 jyotirlingas.

Final Remarks

Srisailam rewards the aspirant who keeps both halves of its name. Mallikarjuna puts it on the jyotirlinga list, Bhramaramba puts it among the Maha Shakti Peethas, and the Nallamala forest puts it in the environment syllabus as well.

Keep it in Andhra Pradesh, keep the Krishna below it and keep Krishnadevaraya’s 1516 visit as the date to anchor the architecture. The rest of the detail has somewhere to sit once those three are fixed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Practice Questions

Prelims MCQs

Q1. Srisailam, the site of the Mallikarjuna jyotirlinga, is located in which hill range?

(a) Seshachalam
(b) Nallamala
(c) Anaimalai
(d) Palkonda

Answer: (b) Srisailam lies in the northernmost part of the Nallamala range, an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats.

Q2. The Srisailam temple complex is distinctive because it houses:

(a) Two jyotirlingas
(b) A jyotirlinga and a Maha Shakti Peetha
(c) A jyotirlinga and a Divya Desam
(d) A jyotirlinga and one of the four Char Dham shrines

Answer: (b) Mallikarjuna is a jyotirlinga, and the Bhramaramba shrine, which the temple’s history calls a Shakti Peetha, is commonly counted among the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas.

Q3. Krishnadevaraya visited Srisailam in 1516 while returning from a war against:

(a) The Bahmani Sultanate
(b) The Gajapatis
(c) The Qutb Shahis
(d) The Portuguese

Answer: (b) The temple’s history records the 1516 visit on his return from a war with the Gajapatis, after which he built the salu mandapas; a Saka 1438 inscription also records his visit to Srisailam.

Q4. The Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve lies in:

(a) The Western Ghats
(b) The Nallamala hills, an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats
(c) The Satpura range
(d) The Aravalli range

Answer: (b) The NTCA describes the reserve as lying in the Nallamalai hill ranges, an offshoot of the Eastern Ghats.

Q5. The ‘Development of Srisailam Temple’ project inaugurated in December 2022 was executed under which scheme?

(a) HRIDAY
(b) Swadesh Darshan
(c) PRASHAD
(d) Smart Cities Mission

Answer: (c) PIB records it as a PRASHAD project of the Ministry of Tourism, completed at Rs 43.08 crore.

Mains Questions

1. Srisailam reflects the layering of royal patronage in the Deccan from the Satavahanas to Vijayanagara. Discuss. (15 marks, 250 words)
2. Examine the coexistence of Shaiva and Shakta traditions at Srisailam and its significance for Indian religious history. (10 marks, 150 words)
3. Pilgrimage inside a tiger reserve creates competing demands. Discuss the challenges at Srisailam and suggest a balanced approach. (15 marks, 250 words)
4. Assess the PRASHAD scheme’s approach to pilgrimage infrastructure with reference to Srisailam. (10 marks, 150 words)
5. How did Vijayanagara rulers use temple patronage at sites such as Srisailam to project royal authority? (10 marks, 150 words)