About $22 Billion In Gold, Diamonds, Jewels Found In Indian Temple

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About $22 Billion In Gold, Diamonds, Jewels Found In Indian Temple

In Southern India a story that sounds like the plot line of a Hollywood adventure is unfolding. Over the past week, on orders from the country's Supreme Court, a panel has found a treasure estimated to be worth $22 billion in the underground vaults of a Hindu temple in Trivandrum, India.

The AP reports:

Inside the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, investigators were counting the staggering hoard of gold coins and statues of gods and goddesses studded with diamonds and other precious stones. Outside, small groups of armed policemen patrolled the temple grounds in the heart of the Kerala state capital, Trivandrum.

Metal detectors were hurriedly installed at temple entrances after six days of searches revealed a treasure trove of artifacts, statues and temple ornaments made of gold and embellished with jewels.

The valuables were donated to the temple by devotees over hundreds of years, and India's erstwhile royal family has been the custodian of the treasures.

The vaults had not been opened in about 150 years and the treasure spans some 500 years. India's Supreme Court ordered that the vaults of the temple be inventoried after a man filed a suit that worried about how the trust was caring for the riches.

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The panel appointed by the Supreme Court has opened five of the six vaults. The panel managed to open the sixth vault but found an iron wall inside it, reports the BBC. As if the story couldn't get any weirder, The Hindustan Times reports the sixth vault has a snake on the front door and quoting an unnamed royal family source, it reports that opening it "might be a bad omen."

The Guardian reports that the sixth vault has "special locks" but experts should be able to examine them and open it by Friday. The Guardian also reports that the inventory is being conducted under the watch of police, but no pictures or video of the vaults will be taken or released because it "is strictly prohibited" within a "sacred space."

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As we said, $22 billion is an almost unimaginable number. But that is likely a conservative estimate. The Hindu reports that the panel is simple counting and weighing the valuables. "Their value, including antique value, is not being assessed," The Hindu reports.

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Interestingly, the story was from July of 2011 and ten years later, the sixth vault has still not been opened.

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A One Trillion Dollar Hidden Treasure Chamber is Discovered at India's Sree Padmanabhaswamy TempleThis story with full hyperbole is from 2015.

Adding to recent treasure findings in several other vaults, the researchers are estimating could total over $1 trillion. But that is where the problem starts, nobody wants to dare open the hidden inner sanctum.

Like all hidden treasure stories, Kerala’s Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple has been a fascination in India for many years, and one shrouded in mystery and fear. Two enormous Cobras are rumored to be protecting the innermost hidden chamber. To make matters worse, legend has it that anyone who opens the vault will be met with disastrous results.

The mysterious Vault B has kept everyone at bay for many years, although five other vaults were opened in 2011 by a team approved by the Supreme Court. The inventory unveiled a major priceless treasure. Massive piles of jewels, idols, and coins were uncovered. The myth of Vault B and its dangers were recently discounted when the Auditor General Vinod Rai informed the Supreme Court that Vault B had been opened at least seven times to his knowledge since 1990 and nothing horrific happened.

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(UPDATED 8/22/16) According to the India Times, an audit conducted into the assets of the famed Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram has shown that a massive amount of gold from its repositories has mysteriously disappeared. Up to 769 Gold Pots and Silver bars have been reported missing. Some skeptics are also suggesting that there is a hidden tunnel beneath the chamber that allowed the architects to lock the chamber doors from within, making it impossible to breach. This secret tunnel could invariably have led to many years of plundering the treasure trove without anyone noticing.

An expert panel inventorying assets at the Temple has approached the apex court for permission to open the vault, as per a report in Hindustan Times. The report also added that the Travancore royal family along with a section of devotees and the shrine’s administration opposed the opening of the B-vault but may lose their fight to an expected Supreme Court ruling.

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What has not been acknowledged by the Indian Court is the existence of a hidden inner chamber beyond Vault B. This chamber is historical told to have thick walls made of solid gold and it is where the mystery really exists and could contain the largest undiscovered treasure find in the history of the world.

The platforms in front of the Vimanam and where the deity rests, are both carved out of a single massive stone cut out of a rock measuring 20 feet square and 2.5 feet thick

Among the six chambers in the Temple, Chamber B is very closely associated with Sri Padmanabhaswamy. It is not a part of the Temple Treasury. The holy Chamber houses an idol of Sri Padmanabha and many valuables meant to enhance the potency of the Principal Deity.

The Supreme Court of India and its seven-member committee have already opened six of the secret vaults and have discovered at a depth of 20 feet underground approximately $22 billion in treasure including, golden idols, golden elephants and idols wearing 18 foot diamond necklaces, as well as countless bags of gold coins from around the world and ceremonial costumes included 66 pound solid gold coconut shells studded with rubies and emeralds.

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In an inventory list from August 2014, Vault A contained 2,000 pounds of gold coins, dating to around 200 B.C. Also found, was a pure Golden Throne adorned with hundreds of diamonds and fully precious stones, meant as a seat for the 18-foot-long Deity. In additional solid gold crowns have been found, all studded with diamonds and other precious stones. The valuables are believed to have been accumulated in the temple over several thousands of years, having been donated to the Deity by various Dynasties and Kings.

Chamber B has long been considered by Astrologers of India, as highly mysterious, sacred and too dangerous to unveil it. The enormous steel door of Chamber B has two massive cobras painted on it and has no bolts, latches or any other means of entry. This is mystery straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

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A door of such a secret vault is known to be opened only by a high level ‘SADHUS’ familiar with the knowledge of chanting a ‘GARUDA MANTRA.' The door cannot be opened by any means by anyone, and at present, there is nobody in the world who possesses the highly sacred and powerful ‘SIDDHAPURSHAS’ and how to execute the highly sacred ‘GARUDA MANTRA.'

If any human attempts are made with man-made technology to open the mysterious inner chamber beyond Chamber B, other than by chanting highly sacred and powerful ‘GARUDA MANTRAS,' it is told that disasters are likely to occur in and around the Temple and throughout India and quite possibly the world.

A book titled ‘Travancore: A guidebook for the visitor’ authored by Emily Gilchrist Hatch recalled a group of people who tried to open the vaults in 1931 and had to flee for their lives when they found the place infested with cobras, and also mentioned a similarly unsuccessful attempt in 1908.

In 2014, journalist Jake Halpern with The New Yorker Magazine conducted extensive interviews with the people who opened the vaults and said “The doors to Vaults A and B required multiple keys, which had been entrusted to Varma and the temple’s current executive, V. K. Harikumar. The observers used the keys to open the metal-grille door to Vault B, and discovered a sturdy wooden door just behind it. They opened this door as well and encountered a third door, made of iron, which was jammed shut. So they turned their attention to Vault A. Once again, they unlocked two outer doors, one of metal and the other of wood. They entered a small room with a huge rectangular slab on the floor, like a toppled tombstone. It took five men more than thirty minutes to move the slab. Beneath it they found a narrow, pitch-black passage, barely wide enough for an adult to get through, leading down a short flight of steps. It was just like the “hollow covered by a stone” previously described by a British missionary. Before the observers descended, a team of firemen arrived and used special equipment to pump oxygen into the enclosure. At the bottom of the stairs was the vault."

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One of the observers was a fifty-nine-year-old attorney named M. Balagovindan, who was Sundararajan’s personal lawyer and a trusted friend. He recalled his first glimpse of the treasure: “When they removed the granite stone, it was almost perfectly dark, except for a small amount of light coming in through the doorway behind us. As I looked into the darkened vault, what I saw looked like stars glittering in a night sky when there is no moon. Diamonds and gems were sparkling, reflecting what little light there was. Much of the wealth had originally been stored in wooden boxes, but, with time, the boxes had cracked and turned to dust. And so the gems and gold were just sitting in piles on the dusty floor. It was amazing.”

According to Rajan, the observers instructed temple employees to haul everything from Vault A upstairs, for inspection. It took fifteen men all day. Rajan said that beholding the treasure was a “divine moment.” There were countless gold rings, bangles, and lockets, many encrusted with gems. And there were gold chains, each studded with jewels and eighteen feet long—the length of the main idol. Rajan told me that coin experts estimated that the vault held approximately a hundred thousand gold coins, spanning centuries of trade: Roman, Napoleonic, Mughal, Dutch. He also described seeing a set of solid-gold body armor, known as an Angi, built to adorn the main idol.

The vault also contained loose diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones. According to Balagovindan, the most impressive gems were the large diamonds, some of which were a hundred and ten carats—“the size of a large thumb,” as he put it. The archaeologists and gemologists estimated that a small solid-gold idol of Vishnu, encrusted with hundreds of gems, was worth thirty million dollars.”

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Padmanabhaswamy Temple treasure

The Padmanabhaswamy temple treasure is a collection of valuable objects including gold thrones, crowns, coins, statues and ornaments, diamonds and other precious stones. It was discovered in some of the subterranean vaults of the Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram the Indian state of Kerala, when five of its six (or possibly eight) vaults were opened on 27 June 2011. The vaults were opened on the orders of the Supreme Court of India, which was hearing a private petition seeking transparency in the running of the temple.[1] The discovery of the treasure attracted widespread national and international media attention as it is considered to be the largest collection of items of gold and precious stones in the recorded history of the world.[2][3][4][5] On the possibility of future appropriation of the wealth, for the need of a new management and proper inventorisation of the articles in the vaults, a public interest petition was registered with Supreme court of India. In 2020, the royal family won the rights to manage the temple, as well all its financial aspects. The Supreme court of India overruled the Kerala High Courts legal jurisprudence based on regional facts and recognition of nullified princely agreement based on "Ruler of Travancore."

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The temple management authorities were aware of the existence of at least six vaults. They situated underground, all around, and to the west of the sanctum-sanctorum of the temple. For documentation purposes, these vaults have been designated as vaults A, B, C, D, E and F. Subsequently, two additional subterranean vaults have been discovered, and they have been designated as Vault G and Vault H.[6][7]

Vault B has not been opened since at least the 1880s. The Supreme-Court-appointed committee-members, based on the 2014 amicus curiae and audit reports, cited instances of irregularities and mismanagement in the affairs of the temple. They opened the metal-grille door to Vault B and discovered a sturdy wooden door just behind it. They opened this door as well, and encountered a third door made of iron, which was jammed shut. The observers tried to force their way in but failed. So they decided to hire a professional locksmith to open or remove the door gently. Then in mid-July, before the locksmith came, the royal family got an injunction from the Supreme Court against opening vault B. Apparently, this was promulgated after a 4-day private decision-making process, based on astrology (Ashtamangala Devaprasnam) in 2011. Finally in July 2020, the Supreme Court refused to give permission to open the vault, as it was an issue involving religious sentiments.

As of end of 2020, Vaults G and H (both of which are long-forgotten cellars that were found by the amicus curie in 2014) remain closed, and have been so for centuries.
Four of the vaults, namely those designated as C, D, E, and F, are in the custody of the temple priests. Over recent years, they have been opened at least eight times every year, and some of the contents stored in them are routinely taken out for use on special ceremonial occasions such as temple festivals, and are deposited back after use.
Following the orders of the Supreme Court of India, a court-appointed committee opened the vaults on 30 June 2011 and entered vault A. They unlocked an iron grille and a heavy wooden door, then removed a granite slab from the floor. Beneath, a few steps led to a dark room which stored the treasure. The various items found scattered everywhere seemed to be not arranged systematically. There were baskets, earthen pots, copper pots, all containing valuable objects.

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The Supreme Court of India had ordered an amicus curiae appointed by it to prepare an inventory of the treasure. Full details of the inventory have not been revealed. However, newspaper reports gave an indication of some of the possible contents of the vaults.[5] About 40 groups of objects were retrieved from Vault E and Vault F. Another 1469 groups of objects found in Vault C and 617 in Vault D. Over 1.02 lakh (102,000) groups of objects (referred to as articles collectively) were recovered from Vault A alone.

According to news reports some of the items found include:

A 4-foot (1.2 m) high and 3-foot (0.91 m) wide solid pure-golden idol of Mahavishnu studded with diamonds and other fully precious stones.[8]
A solid pure-golden throne, studded with hundreds of diamonds and precious stones, meant for the 18-foot (5.5 m) idol of deity
Ceremonial attire for adorning the deity in the form of 16-part gold anki weighing almost 30 kilograms (66 lb)
An 18-foot (5.5 m) long pure-gold chain among thousands of pure-gold chains
A pure-gold sheaf weighing 500 kilograms (1,100 lb)
A 36-kilogram (79 lb) golden veil
1200 'Sarappalli' pure-gold coin-chains encrusted with precious stones weighing between 3.5 kg and 10.5 kg
Several sacks filled with golden artifacts, necklaces, diadems, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, gemstones, and objects made of other precious metals
Gold coconut shells studded with rubies and emeralds
Several 18th-century Napoleonic-era coins
Hundreds of thousands of gold coins of the Roman Empire
An 800-kilogram (1,800 lb) hoard of gold coins dating to the medieval period[8]
According to varying reports, at least three if not many more, solid gold crowns all studded with diamonds and other precious stones and pots of gold. While the above list is on the basis of news reports describing the July 2011 opening (and later) of Vaults A, C, D, E and F, a 1930s report from The Hindu mentions a granary-sized structure (within either Vault C or Vault D or Vault E or Vault F) almost filled with mostly gold and some silver coins.[9]

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The valuables are believed to have been accumulated in the temple over several thousands of years, having been donated to the Deity, and subsequently stored in the Temple, by various Dynasties, such as the Cheras, the Pandyas, the Kolathiris, the Pallavas, the Cholas, the Travancore Royal Family and many other Kings in the recorded history of both South India and beyond, and from the rulers and traders of Mesopotamia, Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, and later from the various colonial powers from Europe, and other countries.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Most scholars believe that this was accumulated over thousands of years, given the mention of the Deity and the Temple in several extant Hindu Texts, the Sangam literature (500 BC to 300 AD wherein it was referred to as the "Golden Temple" on account of its then unimaginable wealth), and the treasures consist of countless artifacts dating back to the Chera, Pandya, and Greek and Roman epochs. The ancient epic Silappatikaram (circa 100 AD to 300 AD) speaks of the then Chera King Cenkuttuvan receiving gifts of gold and precious stones from a certain 'Golden Temple' (Arituyil-Amardon) which is believed to be the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.[17][18][19][20][21]

Gold had been mined as well as panned from rivers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kannur, Wayanad, Kollam, Palakkad and Malappuram districts for thousands of years. The Malabar region had several centers of trade and commerce since the Sumerian Period ranging from Vizhinjam in the South to Mangalore in the North. Also, at times like the invasion by Mysore, the other royal families like the Kolathiris (a branch of the Thiruvithamkur Royal Family - both originating in the Thiruvananthapuram area) in the then Kerala and the Far-South took refuge in Thiruvananthapuram, and stored their temple-wealth there for safekeeping in the Padmanabhaswamy Temple.[10][11][15][16] Also, much of the treasures housed in the much larger and as-yet-unopened vaults, as well as in the much smaller cellars that have been opened, date back to long before the institution of the so-called Travancore Kingdom, e.g. the 800-kg hoard of gold coins from 200 B.C that was mentioned by Vinod Rai. Noted archaeologist and historian R. Nagaswamy has also stated that several records exist in Kerala, of offerings made to the Deity, from several parts of Kerala.[10] During the reign of Maharani Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, hundreds of temples were brought under the Government. The ornaments in these temples were also transferred to the Vaults of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Instead the funds of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple were utilised for the daily upkeep of these temples. From 1766 until 1792, Travancore also provided refuge to around a dozen other Hindu rulers who had fled their own princely states along the Malabar Coast, due to fears of possible military defeat by Tipu Sultan. They came with whatever valuables they had in their temples and donated them to Lord Padmanabha. Many of these rulers, and their extended family members, also left their wealth with Lord Padmanabha when they finally returned home following Tipu Sultan's military defeat by British forces in 1792.[5][6][22]

There are over 3000 surviving bundles of 'Cadjan' leaves (records) in Archaic Malayalam and Tamil, each bundle consisting of a hundred-thousand leaves, which relate to donations of gold and precious stones made exclusively to the temple over the millennia. Most of these are yet to have been studied and very few have even been glanced at yet. As these pertain exclusively to the donations made over millennia they would throw a lot of light on the story of the treasure. Lastly, it has to be remembered that in the Travancore Kingdom, a distinction was always made between the Government (or State) Treasury (Karuvoolam), the Royal Family Treasury (Chellam), and the Temple Treasury (Thiruvara Bhandaram or Sri Bhandaram).