Yaganti Caves

Yaganti Caves are popular tourist sites in Southern India. Yaganti, a well known pilgrim site offers beautiful scenery and extraordinary landscape. The natural caves at Yaganti like the Rokalla Caves, Venkateswara Caves, Sanka Caves and Veera Brahmam Caves are marvelous and adds beauty to this exotic place. Potuluri Veera Brahmam’s colossal piece of work, Kalagnanam is written in the Yaganti Caves. This helps in understanding the glorious history of the caves.

Legend has it that while the great Saint Agastya came to Yaganti, he wanted to build a temple for Lord Vishnu at this place. He even found an old idol of Vishnu and wanted to construct a temple around the same. However the saint found that the toe nail of the idol was broken and hence it was not fit for worship. He immediately prayed to Lord Shiva to seek remedy for this problem. Lord Shiva appeared before Agastya and told him that the formation of the Yaganti location bore a striking resemblance to Kailash and therefore, Lord Vishnu’s temple could not be constructed there and it was only His (Lord Shiva’s) temple that needs to be built there. Hearing this Agastya also requested the Lord to bless all the devotees who visit the temple with an idol of the Goddess also, in the form of Uma Maheshwari, which the Lord immediately agreed to. Wherever Lord Shiva is, his ardent devotee, Lord Nandi would also be there. Therefore one can see three main shrines at this temple of Shiva, Uma Maheshwari and Nandi. There is a pond inside the temple and it is called Pushkarini. Water comes from the nearby hills and it is considered to be very sacred to take a holy dip in this pond.

The Yaganti caves are found in close proximity to the temple and it consists of three main parts – Agastya Cave, Venkateswara Cave and the Veera Brahmam cave. The first one (Agastya cave) has around 120 steps that are steep. This is the place where the saint performed penance to meet Lord Shiva. There is also an idol of the Goddess here. The second (Venkateswara cave) has steeper steps, but is much easier to climb. This is where one can find the idol of Lord Vishnu even today with the broken toe. This idol existed even before the Thirupathi temple came into existence. The third (Veera Brahmam cave) is the place where the saint Veerabrahmendra Swami wrote his prophecy, Kalagnanam. Its height is very short and one needs to bend a lot while entering into the cave.