Kalahasti

Kalahasti's temple of Shiva formed a major religious institution near Tirupati. Its Vayu Lingam associated the deity with wind, giving the shrine a distinct place among southern India's sacred sites. In the early sixteenth century the Vijayanagara ruler Krishnadevaraya supported this temple as part of a wider pattern of royal gifts to the region's religious centres.

His patronage included a monumental gateway tower and a hall of one hundred pillars. Inscription-based histories also describe gifts of pearls, necklaces and a jewelled golden backing for the deity, together with villages assigned to support worship, offerings and festivals in honour of his parents. Such grants joined valuable objects to continuing sources of income. Kalahasti's sacred landscape consequently embodied both the work of builders and the allocation of rural revenue, linking royal devotion with the temple's ceremonial and economic life.