Ambalappuzha Sree Krishna Swamy Temple

The marvellous pilgrimage centre is brimming with devotees and tourists alike, all throughout the year. The shrine is one of the oldest in the region and the history is associated with the Guruvayur Temple located in the Thrissur district of Kerala itself. 

The temple holds an extremely fascinating myth behind the distribution of Paal Payasam Prasad aka the rice pudding. It is believed that once Lord Krishna appeared in the court of the then ruling King in the form of a sage and challenged him to a game of chess. The king being a chess enthusiast happily agreed and both the parties proceeded to decide the prize in case of their winning. 

The sage wanted a few grains of rice in case he won; the actual number of grains being decided by the number of squares on the chessboard. It was agreed upon that each proceeding square would hold the exponential number of grains of the preceding square, starting with 1 grain and going on to 2, 4, 16, 256 etc.

The game began and needless to say, the sage won. The king began to give out the prize and on calculation, it was found that the number of grains as per the rules, hugely exceeding the grains in the royal granary. The sage has very wittingly used the concept of geometric progression and outsmarted the king. The final translated number of the grains equalled many trillion tons of rice. The king could not, therefore, keep up with his words and was indebted to the sage.

Then the sage revealed his true identity in the form of Lord Krishna and told the king that he could repay over time by serving rice pudding i.e. paal payasam in the temple till the debt was paid off. This is how the temple got to serving paal payasam to its devotees over time.