HUNDREDS OF tonnes of human hair, offered by Hindu devotees over the past five months at India’s richest temple in southern Andhra Pradesh state, have earned the temple over €31 million from wigmakers around the world.
More than 40,000 pilgrims, including women, get their heads shaved each day at the Tirumala Temple, 370 miles southeast of the state capital, Hyderabad. In the centuries-old practice they offer their hair to Venkateshwara, the presiding deity credited with granting their wishes.
According to recently released data, the temple’s trust held an online auction of 561 tonnes of hair collected since last September, nearly quadrupling its earnings to two billion rupees (€30.32 million) compared with the same period last year.
Temple officials said the hair, divided into five categories based on its length and texture, was sold to European, US and Chinese wigmakers in two lots, the second of which was auctioned at the weekend. Domestically, hair from the temple is popular with wigmakers in Mumbai, who sell their products to Bollywood film stars.
Shaving heads, or tonsuring, at the temple that takes it name from the surrounding Tirumala hills, where it is located, is carried out in 16 massive halls – two of which operate round the clock – by some 650 barbers, including 60 women.
Each one shaves an average of 60 heads in a six-hour shift, harvesting about 1,760lbs (800kg) of hair every day.
Other than hair, the temple – which is the most visited Hindu shrine in India and is believed to be the second richest religious body after the Vatican – faces another problem of plenty: the huge quantities of gold and jewels donated daily by devotees.
Each month the temple’s huge hundi, or donation pot, is filled with about 220lb (100kg) of gold, mostly in the form of bars, coins and ornaments, and some 264lb (120kg) of silver.
Thick wads of cash, including a basket of foreign currencies, were offered as tens of thousands of devotees lined up for hours for a few fleeting seconds in front of the temple deity.
The temple trust regularly sends a portion of its gold collection to the mint in Mumbai to be melted down into 22-carat “dollar coins” that are sold to Venkateshwara’s devotees worldwide.
In mid-2010, claiming security concerns, it deposited 1.07 tonnes of gold with the public sector State Bank of India.
The next online hair e-auction is scheduled for May.