“I am Black in colour”
That’s what Goddess Annapooreswari told the great King Valabhan Kolathiri.
Valabhan Kolathiri was known as the ‘Great and famous lord’ as he ruled over the land from his fort ‘Valpattanam’. With a battery of able ministers and a strong army of twenty five thousand warriors, King Valabhan was respected and revered by his subjects for being very just ruler. More over his subjects also praised the King for persuading goddess Annapoornadevi to come and stay in the village of Cherukunnu.

The legend is – once a sage from the Brigu lineage did prolonged penance at the shrine of goddess Annapoornadevi of Kashi. Pleased by his devotion towards her, Goddesses told the sage, she would accompany him to his land- Malayaland , today’s state of Kerala. Thus the Goddess and her attendants travelled by sea and landed at the west cost. From there she traveled into the interiors by road and reached the village of Cherukunnu where she held a feast for the Brahmins as it was an auspicious day, the dwadashi in the month of Makaram.

Meanwhile the King Valabham Kolathiri got the news of Goddess’s arrival in his land and he rushed to meet her. The pious King bowed low and requested her to grant permission to build a temple celebrating the memory of her visit. The Goddesses could not refuse the King’s request and thus Valabhan quickly ordered the building of a grand temple for the goddess. He invited the best craftsmen and architects for the job. When it came to the making of the idol, Goddess appeared in King’s dream asked him to cast the idol using panchloha (an alloy made out of five metals). King immediately set the best goldsmith in the land on the job. When the goldsmith completed the idol the King was dismayed to see the idol had turned black in colour. He admonished the goldsmith to adjust the proportion of the metals in the alloy and ordered more gold to be added to the cast so that the Goddess would acquire a glowing complexion. But inspite of adding more and more gold to the alloy, the casted idol invariably would turn black in colour. King was disappointed and unhappy as he could not understand why the cast was turning black. Late evening the King fell asleep burdened by the thought that temple consecration was getting delayed due to the black idol. That night Goddess appeared in his dream and said “Oh King don’t you worry about my complexion because I am black in colour. I am Maha Kaleshwari, the black goddess. Go ahead and cast my idol in the black panchaloha metal”.
King got the idol recast again and consecrated it in the temple.
Since then Goddess Annapoornadevi has stayed on at Cherukkunu, and she came to be known as the black goddess or Maha Kaleshwari.

Story Collected by: Vidya Kamat

Source: Lore and legends of North Malabar by Vanidas Elayvoor

Location Kerala

Image Copyright: Vidya Kamat