Anantha padmanabhaswamy Temple is situated at Thiruvanantapuram, kerala, India.
After 2011, the whole world has come to know about this temple because after the rule from the supreme court of india 5 out of the 6 vault of padmanabhajswamy temple has been opened and the treasures that were uncovered was beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
when exactly was this temple built is hard to tell but it's earlist mention was in 300 BCE sangam period literature this temple is dedicated to lord vishnu and it is one of the 108 (Divya Desham) of Vishnu from IPS officer T.P.Situndararajan filed a petition in 2009 against the temple management the supreme court ruled in favor of him and made a select team of experts to open the valuts of the temple and make a list of all the treasures currently deposited under the temple.
The 6 vaults of the temple were listed as vaults A,B,C,D,E and F among them C,D,E and F were opened periodically but A and B were not In 2014, the new Yorker magazine conducted an interview with mr. V.K.Harikumar.
He was a trusty of the temple and was present at the time of opening the vaults and that interview can shed some light on what exactly happened that day like i said before, only C,D,E and F were opened before but not vault A and B because to open A and B , special keys were to be used and enormous amount of man power was needed too that day they tired to open vault B first with those keys.
First the iron grill was opened, then a wooden door after that they found themselves in an ante chamber outside the actual entrance if the vault B the entrance was blocked with a big iron door that was jammed shut but there was no way of opening the door, no lock to open, no bolts, simply nothing so they left valut B alone for the time being and tried to open the vault A instead same as B , there was on grill, then the wooden door and then the Antechmaber but this time , no big iron door blocking the way, instead a big granite slab on the floor after a lot of people trying for a long time , the stone was moved it revealed a narrow dark staircase going downward , like a cave it was so narrow that only one person could walk on it at one time after the fire brigade personnel had pumped oxygen in the underground passage, a handful of archaeologists made their way down and they were not ready for what was down there, it could have made anyone lose their mind.
Whatever little light could make its way to the space down there made the newly revealed room glitter like a sky full of stars this is the valut and it was filled to brim with golds and diamonds and other precious stones.
It took 15 men all day to bring every thing up from the underground vault now allow me to describe what they found inside the vault
• A three and a half feet tall solid pure gold idol of Mahavishnu with hundreds of diamonds and rubies
• 18 foot long pure gold
• A glod sheaf weighing 500 kilogram
• 1200 sarappalli gold coins that were encrusted with precious stones.
• A body armor made of gold and weighting 30 kilograms.
• Sacks full of gold necklaces, rings, diadems, diamonds, rubies, sapphires emeralds, gemstones and objects made of other precious metals some of the diamonds were reportedly bigger than 110 carat.
And if you are not familiar with the unit of carats just keep in mind the kohinoor, the crown jewel of the British is only 105
• coconut shell made of gold, encrusted with ruby and emerald more than 100,000 gold coins of the roman empire
• gold coins from the area of Napoleon the mughals, the Dutch, British East Indian company
• heap of glod coins weighing more than 800 kilograms dating back tp 200 BCE, worth 0f 2.7 crore rupees (US$ 420,000) each
• A pure gold throne, studded with hundreds of diamonds and other precious stones.
• Three solid glod crowns which were also studded with diamonds and other precious stones
• More than 100 chairs and thousands of pots made of pure gold that all of it
In total price of all the recovered items would be 1.3 lakh crores (US$20Billion) and that too only counting the material cost meaning if those items were built today, the amount of money it would cost now if the antique and cultural value were taken into account these assets could be worth ten times their material cost which takes the price of those items to US$200 Billion and this was not the most interesting part of the story because now we are going to talk about vault B which is by the way the biggest of the six vaults the same valut B which the archaeologists could not open earlier.
Now we know that they went inside the Antechmaber of vault B and found the door that could not be opened there was no key that could open that door there was no visible lock to put any key in it after examining the door carefully they could make out the emblems of two cobras it was actually a warning to anyone who tries to open it those who knew about this emblem knew that it was the sign of Naag-paash or Naag-Bandhan (roughly translated a ritualistic lock of snakes)and the only way to open this was to be able to recite or chant the Garud Mantra only and erudite Rishi who knew the correct incantation of Garud Mantra could open this no amount of force could open this door and even if it was opened by force it would bring terrible catastrophe upon earth some say this valut houses the riches gained from the Samudra Manthan which can dwarf the golds of EI Dorado some say sesh naag himself is guarding the vault one thing is for sure that there is some connection between that vault and snakes and not the Cobras of the emblem, but real live Cobras as we get to know from 1933 book of an English woman named Ms. Emily Gilchrist Travankor - A travel guide for visitors that in 1908 the princely state of Travankor was in dire need for money so they tried to open the vault but as soon as they reached the Antechmaber they had to run for their lives becuase the Antechmaber was infested with hundreds of Cobras but the Travankor Royal family's record says that the valut B was opened last time in 1880 to get an estimate of the treasures stored there and if we go by that estimate then in the year 1880 the content of vault B was worth Rupees 11,000 crores (US$ 1.9 Billion) considering the subsequent rupee inflation increase in the pirce of gold and precious metals and precious stones in general in the today's value the treasures would be worth 50 Trillion rupees (US$ 780 Billion) once again 780 Billion Dollars and subsequently if we were to apply ths antique and cultural value it becomes Rupees 500 lakh crores (US$ 7.8 Trillion) and if this rupees Trillion is confusing you then compare it with this the government of India has recently recapitalized all 21 public sector banks with a whooping 2.11 Trillion Rupees And in 2014 two more vaults were discovered in the Padmanabhaswamy temple which are reportedly even bigger than vault B and more mysterious.
